^tftiLF 


*B   S'JS   0T7 


Hie    Elimination    of 
the  Tramp 


By  the  introduction  into  America  of  the 
Labour  Colony  System  already  proved  effec- 
tive in  Holland,  Belgium,  and  Switzerland, 
with  the  modifications  thereof  necessary  to 
adapt  this  system  to  American  conditions. 


By 

Edmond    Kelly 


With  Prefaces  by : 

R.  W.  Hebberd,  Commissioner  of  Charities 

R.  Pulton  Cutting,  President  of  the  Association  for  the 

Improvement  of  the  Condition  of  the  Poor 
Robert  W.  de  Forest,  President  of  the  Charity  Organ- 
isation Society 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

Microsoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/eliminationoftraOOkellrich 


THE    ELIMINATION    OF 
THE  TRAMP 


THE    ELIMINATION    OF 
THE    TRAMP 


BY  THE  INTRODUCTION  INTO  AMERICA  OF  THE  LABOUR 
COLONY   SYSTEM  ALREADY   PROVED  EFFECTIVE   IN 
HOLLAND,  BELGIUM,  AND  SWITZERLAND,  WITH 
THE   MODIFICATIONS    THEREOF     NECES- 
SARY TO  ADAPT  THIS  SYSTEM  TO 
AMERICAN  CONDITIONS 


W 


BY  0> 

EDMOND  pLLY,  M.A.,  F.G.S. 

SOMETIME  LECTURER  ON  MUNICIPAL  GOVERNMENT  AT   COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR  OF  "EVOLUTION  AND  EFFORT,"   "GOVERNMENT  OR   HUMAN 

EVOLUTION,"  ETC. 


5 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK    AND   LONDON 

Gbe  Knickerbocker  press 
1908 


^ 


*v** 


Copyright,  1908 

BY 

EDMOND  KELLY 


Ube  fmfcfeerbocfter  press,  Hew  J?orfe 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface  by  Robert  W.  Hebberd  v 

Preface  by  R.  Fulton  Cutting  .        .        .        .  vii 

Preface  by  Robert  W.  De  Forest       .  xi 

Author's  Preface xv 

CHAPTER  I 
The  Problem i 

CHAPTER  II 
Classification  of  Tramps 9 

CHAPTER  III 
Labour  Colonies 18 

CHAPTER  IV 
Swiss  Labour  Colonies 34 

CHAPTER  V 

Application    of    the  Continental  System   of 
Labour  Colonies  to  America    .        .        ...    51 

§  1.   Proposed  modification  of  the  Swiss  labour 

colony  plan        .         .         .         .         .         -57 
iii 


OQ^OOQ 


iv  Contents 

CHAPTER  V  {Continued-) 

PAGE 

§  2.   What  will  be  the  general  aspect  of  a  pro- 
posed labour  colony  ?         .         .         .         .62 

§  3.    Separation  of  the  unemployed  from  the 

unemployable   ......     64 

§  4.    Functions    of    a    magistrate    under   the 

labour  colony  plan 67 

§  5.    Treatment  of  the  inmates  in   the  forced 

and  free  labour  colonies    .         .         .         ,6% 

§  6.    Punishment -77 

§  7-    Size 79 

§  8.    Cost .80 

§  9.    Relation    of    forced    labour  colonies   to 

penitentiaries 85 

CHAPTER  VI 
Indiscriminate  Almsgiving,  and  Conclusion      .     87 

APPENDIX  A 
Institutional  Farms  in  America         .        .        .97 

APPENDIX  B 

Classifications 103 

APPENDIX  C 
Form  of  Contract  Used  in  Switzerland    .        .  108 

APPENDIX  D 
Rules  and  Regulations  of  Nusshof  Colony       .  no 


PREFACE 

DEPARTMENT    OF    PUBLIC    CHARITIES 
OF   THE    CITY    OF    NEW    YORK. 

New  York,  January  3,  1908. 

Dear  Mr.  Kelly: 

Having  read  with  considerable  care  your 
pamphlet  on  The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp,  I 
desire  to  express  to  you  my  gratification  over 
the  fact  that  you  have  presented  the  labour 
colony  cause  so  forcibly  and  clearly.  Those 
of  us  who  are  now  and  have  long  been  anx- 
ious for  an  agricultural  labour  colony  -in  this 
State,  desire  its  establishment  in  order  that 
vagrants  may  have,  what  is  now  practically 
denied  to  them,  the  opportunity  for  reform- 
ation under  long-continued  discipline  that 
is  really  helpful  and  not  merely  punitive  in 
its  nature.  The  establishment  by  this  State 
of  an  involuntary  labour  colony  on  waste  land 
susceptible  of  reclamation  and  of  utilisation 
in  agricultural  pursuits  should  be  recognised 
as  a  pressing  necessity,    and   the   pamphlet 


vi  Preface 

which  you  have  written  should  be  a  great 
help  toward  that  desirable  end.  Permit  me 
to  express  the  hope  that  it  will  be  given  wide 
circulation  among  those  who  have  it  in  their 
hearts  to  consider  the  unfortunate,  and  have 
it  as  well  in  their  power  to  assist  in  securing 
the  establishment  of  such  a  colony  as  we 
desire  in  this  State. 

Respectfully  yours, 

Robert  W.  Hebberd, 

Commissioner. 

Edmond  Kelly,  Esq., 

175  Second  Avenue,  New  York  City. 


PREFACE 

BY 

R.  Fulton  Cutting 

THE  migration  cityward  is  not  due  wholly 
to  distaste  for  rural  life.  It  is  part  of  the 
grave  problem  of  the  lack  of  winter  employ- 
ment. From  December  to  March  our  cities 
are  overrun  with  a  pitiable  legion  whose  only 
fault  it  is  that  "no  man  has  hired  them.', 
With  these  are  many  who  discredit  the  worthy 
poor  by  their  fraudulent  appeal  to  sympathy. 
Our  remedies  for  this  social  malady  are  the 
relief  societies,  the  municipal  lodging  house, 
and  the  bread  line.  Unequal  to  the  strain 
in  normal  times  these  remedies  utterly  break 
down  in  years  of  financial  depression  like 
the  present.  Food  and  lodging  are  not  what 
most  of  these  nomads  want,  and  charity  does 
not  meet  their  need.  They  make  us  feel  the 
force  of  the  reflection  of  Edward  Dennison 
— "  the  gigantic  subscription  lists  which  are 


Vlll 


Preface 


vaunted  to  signify  our  benevolence,  are  monu- 
ments of  our  indifference/'  The  following 
monograph  is  a  sincere  and  commenda- 
ble effort  to  make  us  use  our  intelligence 
about  this  problem  of  labour  as  the  Belgians, 
the  Swiss,  and  the  Dutch  have  used  theirs 
before  us.  It  proposes  an  expedient  that 
has  proved  its  value  abroad  and  can  un- 
questionably be  pursued  to  advantage  in 
this  country.  That  it  affords  a  final  solution 
of  this  phase  of  the  labour  problem  no  one 
will  maintain,  but  that  it  will  materially  relieve 
the  suffering  of  the  unemployed  and  make 
them  more  capable  of  self-support  is  uncon- 
testable. Its  merit,  moreover,  is  not  confined 
to  either  the  shelter  or  educational  value  of 
the  single  colony.  It  opens  up  a  vast  field 
of  State  co-operation  in  the  labour  market 
such  as  is  practised  by  the  Workman's  Relief 
Stations  of  Germany  and  Switzerland,  and 
the  Swiss  Inter-Cantonal  Union  for  Relief 
in  kind.  In  the  latter  country  this  co-opera- 
tion extends  even  to  the  deferring  of  the 
conduct  of  certain  National  and  Cantonal 
public  works  until  after  the  agricultural 
season  has  terminated  so  as  to  afford  a  better 
opportunity  for  home  labour  when  the  har- 


Preface  ix 

vest  demand  ceases.  It  can  hardly  be  ex- 
pected that  this  enterprise  should  be  wholly 
self-supporting.  The  long  winter  season 
in  this  vicinity  seriously  handicaps  this 
possibility,  but  intelligent  and  extended  co- 
operation between  city  and  country  authori- 
ties and  the  labour  colonies  should  materially 
enhance  the  latter's  remunerative  value. 

There  are  many  articles  used  in  city  institu- 
tions that  could  be  readily  manufactured  by 
unskilled  labour  under  proper  oversight  and 
these  institutions  should  all  be  customers  of 
the  colony.  There  are  also  many  private 
institutions  dependent  upon  the  city  by 
reason  of  a  per  capita  subsidy  for  their 
beneficiaries  and  these  also  should  trade  with 
the  colony.  Altogether  without  interfering 
with  private  business  or  competing  in  the 
general  market  the  colony  should  be  able 
to  dispose  of  a  very  considerable  product. 
The  experiment  should  certainly  be  attempted. 


PREFACE 

BY 

Robert  W.  DeForest. 

MR.  EDMOND  KELLY,  an  American  stu- 
dent of  social  problems,  has  the  unusual 
advantage  of  being  able  to  view  these  prob- 
lems from  the  broad  perspective  of  European 
experience  gained  by  a  long  residence  abroad. 
He  brings  that  knowledge  and  experience  most 
helpfully  to  bear  on  the  problem  of  vagrancy, 
which  has  already  assumed  such  serious  im- 
portance in  every  large  American  city.  To 
the  Old  World  it  is  an  old  problem  with 
which  some  Continental  communities  have 
been  long  dealing  with  more  or  less  success. 
To  the  New  World  it  is,  fortunately  for  us, 
a  new  problem  with  which  we  have  only 
begun  to  deal  and  to  the  solution  of  which, 
with  Mr.  Kelly's  aid,  we  can  apply  Old  World 
experience. 

Mr.    Kelly    reiterates    the   long    admitted 
proposition    that    "vagrancy    is    kept    alive 


xii  Preface 

by  indiscriminate  almsgiving,  and  such  (mis- 
named) charities  as  shelters,  soup-kitchens, 
etc."  But  this  proposition,  axiomatic  as  it 
is  to  every  experienced  charity  worker,  needs 
constant  iteration,  for  strangely  enough  it  is 
still  ignored  in  practice  by  a  large  part  of  our 
intelligent  American  people.  He  recognises, 
too,  the  all-important  distinction  between 
poverty  and  pauperism,  and  urges  that  pau- 
perism, certainly  in  the  form  of  vagrancy, 
can  be  successfully  dealt  with  only  by  govern- 
mental agencies  and  not  by  private  charity. 

In  this  conclusion,.,  our.  American  charity 
organisation  societies,  which  have  been  deal- 
ing with  mendicancy  in  its  various  forms,  will 
undoubtedly  agree. 

Mr.  Kelly's  remedy  is  that  of  labour  colo- 
nies, as  they  have  been  organised  in  Switzer- 
land, and  the  reasons  for  such  institutions, 
which  in  dealing  with  vagrants  shall  stand 
between  the  almshouse  and  the  prison  or 
penitentiary,  are  well  illustrated  by  the  ex- 
perience of  our  New  York  Charity  Organisa- 
tion Society  in  relation  to  mendicancy.  Our 
vagrants  who  are  found  begging  are  divided 
roughly  into  two  classes :  First,  those  who  are 
in  real  need,  who  have  not  yet  formed  perma- 


Preface 


Xlll 


nent  habits  of  vagrancy  and  who,  with  some 
encouragement,  can  be  induced  to  work  and 
again  become  useful  members  of  society. 
Our  treatment  of  these  has  been  relief  of  their 
immediate  necessities,  aid  in  securing  work, 
and  encouragement  to  continue  it.  We  have 
never  caused  an  arrest  for  vagrancy  until  the 
opportunity  for  reform  has  been  offered. 
Second,  the  confirmed  mendicants,  who  after 
warning  did  not  desist.  These  we  have  caused 
to  be  arrested,  and  then  we  have  met  the  same 
practical  difficulties  which  Mr.  Kelly  de- 
scribes. The  magistrate  has  no  alternative 
between  discharge  and  imprisonment.  If 
tender-hearted  or  mercifully  inclined,  he  will 
hesitate  to  imprison  for  a  single  act  of  begging. 
If  severe  he  may  punish  the  first  offender  as 
severely  as  the  hardened  criminal.  It  is  only 
by  being  able  to  present  to  the  magistrate 
the  evidence  which  the  Society  has  accumu- 
lated respecting  habitual  mendicants  that  we 
have  been  able  to  secure  any  adequate  pun- 
ishment for  such  cases.  If  the  magistrate 
had  an  opportunity  to  make  some  inter- 
mediary disposition  of  vagrancy  cases,  as  in 
Switzerland,  the  inherent  difficulty  of  the 
present  situation  would  be  avoided. 


xiv  Preface 

It  is  quite  evident  from  Mr.  Kelly's  account 
of  the  Continental  labour  colonies  that  their 
success  or  failure  is  quite  as  much  a  question 
of  management  as  of  system,  and  in  the  event 
of  any  American  experiment  the  personnel  of 
the  manager  would  be  all  important. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  hoped  that  the  experi- 
ment of  an  American  Labour  Colony  can  be 
fairly  tried  under  appropriate  legislation. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

THE  introduction  of  labour  colonies,  with 
a  view  to  solving  the  tramp  problem, 
has  occupied  me  now  for  some  twenty 
years.  The  first  time  that  I  wrote  on  the 
subject *  I  ventured  to  suggest  that  the  labour 
colony  system  would  never  be  complete  until 
to  the  forced  labour  colonies  then  in  opera- 
tion in  Holland,  Belgium,  and  Germany  were 
added  free  labour  colonies,  so  that  every 
person  found  wandering  on  the  highways  or 
the  streets  without  means  of  support  could 
be  inexpensively  provided  for — in  the  former 
if  in  need  of  discipline,  in  the  latter  if  a 
blameless  victim  of  industrial  conditions. 
About  the  time  when  I  was  writing,  Swit- 
zerland had  come  to  a  similar  conclusion 
though  I  did  not  learn  of  it  until  two  years  ago. 
I  have  visited  all  the  colonies  in  Holland 
and  Belgium;  the  colony  of  Merxplas  I  have 
visited  twice;  the  second  time  in  the  com- 
pany  of    Mr.    Henri    Monod,    late    Director 

i  Evolution  and  Effort:  The  Problem  of  Pauperism,  p.  157. 


xvi  Preface 

of  Charities  in  France  (Assistance  Publique) 
and  Mr.  Jean  Cruppi,  one  of  the  Vice-Presi- 
dents of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  who  was 
the '  ■  Rapporteur ' '  of  a  Committee  on  Vagrancy 
appointed  by  the  Chamber.  On  this  occasion, 
we  had  all  the  facilities  which  one  Government 
can  render  to  another  in  such  an  enquiry, 
and  although  I  was  impressed  anew  by  the 
discipline  and  order  of  Merxplas,  I  was 
equally  impressed  by  its  failure  to  reform 
its  inmates  or  to  meet  its  expenses  by  the 
product  of  their  labour. 

In  1906,  the  Report  of  the  Departmental 
Committee  on  Vagrancy  called  my  attention 
to  the  colonies  in  Switzerland  as  being 
practically  self-supporting,  and  I  therefore 
visited  them.  It  is  the  result  of  this  visit 
which  I  have  embodied  in  the  present  mono- 
graph. During  the  years  in  which  I  have 
given  attention  to  this  subject,  my  first  im- 
pression in  their  favour  has  never  been 
attacked  by  a  single  doubt.  Every  few 
years  the  system  has  been  improved  until 
at  last  in  Switzerland  it  seems  to  have  ap- 
proached very  near  perfection.  In  Holland 
and  Belgium  for  years  vagrancy  has  been 
unknown,  but  not  without  cost  to  the  State. 


Preface  xvii 

In  those  cantons  of  Switzerland  in  which 
these  labour  colonies  are  in  operation,  not 
only  has  vagabondage  disappeared  but  it 
has  been  eliminated  without  cost  to  the 
State,  beyond  the  initial  expense  of  pur- 
chasing land  and  constructing  buildings. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  public  mind 
is  now  agitated  by  the  extent  of  the  tramp 
evil  in  the  United  States  and  of  the  acute 
state  which  the  problem  of  the  unemployed 
is  likely  to  reach  this  winter,  I  have  endeav- 
oured to  present  in  these  pages  all  the  infor- 
mation and  suggestions  that  occurred  to  me 
in  this  connection,  and  I  earnestly  hope  they 
may  lead  to  legislation  at  an  early  date. 
It  seems  incredible  that  a  country  as 
advanced  in  civilisation  as  ours  should  in 
this  one  respect  be  so  far  behind  Holland, 
Belgium,  and  Switzerland,  or  that  an  evil 
so  great  should  be  allowed  to  flourish  un- 
checked when  we  have  at  our  disposal  so 
simple,  inexpensive,  and  complete  a  remedy. 

The  present  is  an  exceptionally  favourable 
moment  for  legislative  action:  In  New  York 
State  not  only  is  the  tramp  question  occupy- 
ing the  railroads  but  the  present  period  of 


xviii  Preface 

industrial  depression  is  largely  increasing 
the  army  of  the  unemployed;  the  question 
of  the  tramp  cannot  be  separated  from  that 
of  the  unemployed  for  vicious  tramps  often 
masquerade  as  unemployed,  and  innocent  un- 
employed after  a  few  weeks'  tramping  can- 
not be  distinguished  from  tramps. 

Again  there  is  a  plan  to  spend  $4,000,000 
on  a  new  penitentiary  on  Riker's  Island 
which  is  on  the  point  of  execution  and  may 
be  unnecessary  should  it  be  decided  to  insti- 
tute Farm  Colonies.  Commissioner  Lantry 
proposed  to  build  this  penitentiary  early  in 
1906;  his  plan  was  formally  approved  by  the 
Board  of  Estimate  on  September  4th  of  the 
same  year  and  an  appropriation  of  $3,500 
made  to  pay  for  the  expense  of  holding  an 
architect's  competition  with  respect  to  plans 
therefor.  It  must  be  remembered  that  it 
was  part  of  the  original  intention,  when  the 
Department  of  Charities  was  separated  from 
the  Department  of  Correction,  that  Black- 
well's  Island  be  employed  exclusively  by  the 
Department  of  Charities  and  new  buildings  be 
put  up  on  Riker's  and  Hart's  Islands  for  the 
purposes  of  the  Department  of  Correction. 
Moreover  a  new  penitentiary  seemed  indis- 


Preface  xix 

pensable  in  view  of  the  sale  of  the  old  Kings 
County  Penitentiary  and  the  transfer  of  its 
inmates  to  Blackwell's  Island.  A  sum  of 
$200,000  was  approved  by  the  mayor  on 
November  11,  1907,  for  the  purpose  of 
entering  into  contracts  for  detailed  plans  with 
the  successful  competitors  and  the  Corporation 
Counsel  has  already  approved  the  payment 
of  $40,000  for  these  plans.  At  any  moment 
therefore  the  mayor  may  be  in  a  position  to 
sign  contracts  for  the  building  of  this  peni- 
tentiary and  this  once  done  it  will  consti- 
tute a  serious  obstacle  to  the  appropriation 
of  the  sums  necessary  for  the  purchase  of 
land  and  the  construction  of  labour  colony 
buildings.1 

Nothing  stands  so  much  in  the  way  of 
this  labour  colony  plan  in  France  and  in 
England  as  the  existence  of  just  such  expen- 
sive buildings  as  it  is  now  proposed  to  con- 
struct on  Riker's  Island.  It  is  the  large  and 
costly  penitentiaries  which  already  exist  in 
France  that  render  abortive  all  efforts  to 
introduce  the  labour  colony  plan  in  France 
and  the  unanimous  Report  of  the  Depart- 

» 1  desire  to  express  my  indebtedness  to  the  Bureau  of 
Municipal  Research  for  up-to-date  information  on  this 
subject. 


xx  Preface 

mental  Committee  in  favour  of  labour  col- 
onies will  doubtless  fail  in  England  for  the 
same  reason. 

The  spending  of  $4,000,000  for  the  building 
of  a  penitentiary  on  Riker's  Island  when 
the  expenditure  of  $2,000,000  on  labour 
colonies  will  not  only  solve  the  whole  tramp 
problem  but  at  the  same  time  in  great  part 
relieve  the  congestion  of  the  penitentiaries 
ought,  in  itself  to  constitute  a  sufficient  rea- 
son for  immediate  action  not  only  with  a 
view  to  securing  the  necessary  legislation 
for  the  labour  colony  plan  but  also  with  a 
view  to  preventing  a  large  and  unnecessary 
expenditure. 

But  we  ought  not  to  be  required  to  furnish 
any  special  reason  for  legislation  on  this 
subject. 

If  any  one  will  follow  the  tramp  during  a 
night  in  New  York  beginning  at  the  Doyers 
Street  Mission  which  is  open  between  ten  and 
eleven,  where  they  crowd  to  keep  warm;  next, 
when  the  Mission  is  closed,  into  the  streets 
where  the  "hobo"1  and  tramp  wander  and 
into   the  liquor  saloons  which  the   "bum" 

»  For  an  explanation  of  the  distinction  between  "bum," 
"hobo,"  and  "tramp,"  see  Appendix  p.  103. 


Preface  xxi 

frequents — always  in  the  effort  to  keep  warm; 
next  to  one  of  the  bread  lines,  as  for  exam- 
ple at  the  Bowery  Mission,  where  they  stand 
in  two  rows  before  it  is  open  in  the  hope  of 
a  meal,  and  where  one  thousand  are  fed  and 
very  nearly  one  thousand  sent  away  unfed 
every  night;  then  to  the  trucks  where  some 
of  them  go  to  snatch  an  hour's  sleep  in  the 
cold;  and  to  the  asphalt  kettles  in  Washington 
Square  round  which  they  huddle — always  in 
the  ineffectual  effort  to  keep  warm; — if  he 
will  take  the  pains  to  scrutinise  these  men 
as  he  can  while  they  file  through  the  Bowery 
Mission  for  their  midnight  meal  and  recognise 
that  more  than  one  half  of  them  are  clearly 
self-respecting  workingmen  without  employ- 
ment, he  will  feel  that  he  has  no  right  to  a 
moment's  rest  so  long  as  he  remains  a  party 
to  the  indifference  that  fails  to  furnish  work 
for  these  men;  and  this  all  the  more  when 
after  reading  these  pages  he  is  forced  to  the 
conclusion  that  there  is  no  reason  why  they 
should  not  be  given  work  save  our  own 
ignorance  or  inattention. 

The  proofs  of  this  monograph  have  been 
read  not  only  by  those  whose  prefaces  are 
published,  but  also  by  Mr.  Samuel  J.  Barrows, 


xxii  Preface 

President  of  the  Prison  Association,  Dr.  Or- 
lando F.  Lewis,  Mr.  Robert  Bruere,  and  Mr. 
J.  G.  Hallimond.  I  have  to  thank  all  these 
gentlemen  for  useful  suggestions. 

Edmond  Kelly. 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF 
THE  TRAMP 


A 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    PROBLEM 

N   army  of  500,000   tramps1  of  which  a 
large  percentage  are  boys  from  sixteen 

1  This  figure  is  calculated  by  taking  as  a  basis  the  number 
of  tramps  killed  on  the  railroads  every  year  and  multiplying 
this  number  by  the  figure  representing  the  proportion  of 
train  men  killed  in  the  year,  to  the  total  number  of  train 
men  employed. 

The  number  of  trespassers  killed  annually  on  American 
railroads  exceeds  the  combined  total  of  passengers  and 
trainmen  killed  annually. 

Major  Pangborn,  representing  President  Murray  of  the 
Baltimore  &  Ohio,  at  the  National  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Corrections,  Minneapolis,  June,  1907  (Charities  and  the 
Commons,  p.  342)  stated  with  deliberation  that  railroads  fre- 
quently maintain  private  graveyards  along  their  right-of-way, 
in  which  to  bury  vagrants  killed  by  trains  while  trespassing. 
Twenty-five  million  dollars  would  be  a  conservative  esti- 
mate, according  to  Major  Pangborn,  of  the  direct  and  indirect 
annual  financial  losses  to  railroads  in  the  United  States 
through  railway  vagrancy. 


2        The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

to  twenty-one  years  of  age,1  all  of  them 
tending  to  graduate  from  vagrancy  to 
crime. 

Out  of  these,  23,964  trespassers  killed  and 
25,236  trespassers  injured  between  1901-1905, 
most  of  them  tramps. 

Twenty-five  million  dollars  of  annual  loss  to 
railroads,  viz:  property  destroyed  by  tramps, 
partly  through  accident,  such  as  explosions  of 
dynamite  due  to  fires  lit  by  tramps  and  direct 
damage  by  fire,  partly  through  robbery,  ob- 
struction of  tracks,  interference  with  signals, 
stopping  of  trains,  injuring  and  sometimes 
killing  of  employees;  damages  for  injuries. 

An  immense  police  force,  elaborate  criminal 
and  justices'  courts,  municipal  lodging-houses, 
Salvation  Army  institutions  and  missions 
tending  to  increase  the  evil  they  seek  to 
diminish. 

An  alarming  increase  of  crime,  the  United 
States  standing  first  in  the  record  of  crime 
among  the  nations  of  the  world. 

This  is  the  problem  before  us. 

It  has  been  so  ably  treated  by  Dr.  Orlando 

1  "Seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  tramps  we  catch  riding 
on  trains  are  boys  under  twenty  riding  round  just  to  have 
a  look  at  the  country."  Capt.  Ladd,  of  the  L.  S.  and  M.  S. 
Detective  Force. 


The  Problem  3 

F.  Lewis  in  pamphlets,1  articles,  and  addresses 
that  no  more  will  be  attempted  in  these  pages 
than  to  summarise  such  of  the  facts  as  are 
necessary  to  explain  the  labour-colony  system 
adopted  in  Europe  for  the  elimination  of  the 
tramp,  and  to  suggest  some  of  the  modifica- 
tions of  this  system  which  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  make  in  order  to  adapt  it  to  the  special 
conditions  that  prevail  in  America. 

Singularly  enough  it  is  the  two  nations — 
England  and  America — in  which  charity  is 
most  lavish  and  most  highly  organised,  that 
have  most  resolutely  refused  to  adopt  the 
obvious  solution  to  this  problem ;  and  this  not 
owing  to  indifference  alone  but  to  an  exagger- 
ated philosophy  of  self-reliance  which  shrinks 
from  adopting  any  measure  that  looks  like  an 
invasion  of  so-called  individual  liberty;  so 
that  when  a  brother  falls  by  the  wayside 
we  pass  on  the  other  sicje  of  the  road  rather 
than  appear  to  humiliate  him  by  extending  a 
helping  hand. 

It  may  seem  a  contradiction  in  the  same 
sentence  to  admit  lavish  expenditure  of 
charity  and  to  make  an, accusation  of  passing 

i  Particularly  Vagrancy  in  the  United  States,  by  Orlando 
F.  Lewis,  New  York,  1907. 


The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

on  the  other  side;  but  the  contradiction  is  not 
in  the  sentence ;  it  is  in  the  system.  A  man 
whose  body  breaks  down  we  tend  with  the 
utmost  care,  house  him  in  up-to-date  hospi- 
tals, furnish  him  with  the  best  medical  advice, 
and  provide  him  with  a  convalescent  home 
until  he  is  fit  to  work  again;  but  the  man 
whose  soul  breaks  down,  whose  nervous  sys- 
tem gets  out  of  order,  whose  courage  fails,  who 
loses  capacity  for  initiative,  who,  exhausted 
by  three  or  four  generations  of  overwork,  is  on 
the  slightest  menace  of  lowering  prices  the  first 
to  be  discharged ;  who  is  sent  tramping  on  our 
roads  seeking  new  employment  and  either 
succumbs  to  drink  on  the  one  hand  or  to 
wanderlust  on  the  other;  the  man  whose  dis- 
ordered brain  sets  him  wandering  on  the  high 
road;  the  boy  whom  the  habit  of  "train  flip- 
ping' '  has  seduced  into  "beating  the  rail- 
roads" in  search  of  adventure — these  so  long 
as  they  can  stand  on  their  legs  we  either  aban- 
don or  shove  down  the  facilis  descensus  by 
an  occasional  committal  for  thirty  days  that 
fastens  the  bonds  of  vagabondage  on  them 
and  renders  them  less  able  to  find  employment 
than  before. 

And  yet  these  men  who  are  the  necessary 


The  Problem  5 

and  innocent  victims  of  existing  conditions, 
who  are  turned  out  every  day  as  surely  as 
chaff  is  produced  by  a  threshing  machine, 
are  indiscriminately  confounded — not  only  in 
the  mind  of  the  public  but  also  in  that  of  the 
magistrate  who  has  to  deal  with  them — under 
the  one  word  tramp — whether  they  be  dili- 
gently seeking  employment,  innocently  steal- 
ing a  ride  on  a  freight  car,  insanely  driven 
by  the  irresistible  prompting  of  a  disordered 
mind,  or,on  the  other  hand,  deliberately  preying 
on  the  community,  infesting  our  roads,  damag- 
ing our  property,  assaulting  our  women,  cor- 
rupting our  youth,  and  breeding  disease,  moral 
and  physical,  through  every  city  and  hamlet 
in  the  land. 

England  has  for  years  been  studying  this 
problem;  sending  committees  to  Holland,  ap- 
pointing committees  in  Parliament,  printing 
and  discussing  reports  of  committees,  and 
piling  up  a  literature  on  the  subject  too  bulky 
and  bewildering  to  enlighten  or  convince.  For 
years  the  Spencerian  doctrine  that  we  are 
doomed  to  perfection  and  must  therefore  not 
interfere  with  our  fate  prevailed;  it  was  tri- 
umphantly pointed  out  that  the  Dutch  la- 
bour colonies  did  not  reform;  that  they  "did 


6        The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

not  pay" — as  though  labour  colonies  were  in- 
tended to  pay!  that  they  pauperised — as 
though  it  were  possible  to  pauperise  a  con- 
firmed tramp ! * 

But  at  last  the  problem  of  the  unemployed 
became  so  alarming  that  a  departmental  com- 
mittee was  appointed  in  1906  to  examine  the 
whole  question  de  novo  with  the  Right  Hon. 
I.  L.  Wharton  in  the  chair  and  men  upon  the 
committee  as  universally  known  as  Sir  Wil- 
liam Chance.  The  report  of  this  committee 
in  three  volumes  is  an  encyclopaedia  of  infor- 
mation on  the  subject  and  concludes  with  a 
unanimous  vote  in  favour  of  the  adoption  in 
England  of  the  system  of  labour  colonies2 ;  and 
if  labour  colonies  do  not  exist  to-day  in  Eng- 
land it  is  because  John  Burns,  the  President 
of  the  Local  Government  Board  whose  busi- 
ness it  should  be  to  institute  them3  declines  to 
I  do  so.  And  yet  the  labour  colony  is  the  only 
possible  solution  for  the  tramp  problem.    That 

1  The  Dutch  Home  Labour  Colonies,  by   H.   S.   Willink, 

PP-  30,  31- 

2  Report  of  the  Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy,  vol. 
i.,  p.  120. 

3  In  a  speech  delivered  November  28th  (see  London  Times, 
Friday,  November  29th)  he  describes  himself  as  the  "Minis- 
ter of  the  Unemployed  "  and  yet  he  declines  to  adopt  the  only 
system  that  can  effectually  deal  with  them. 


The  Problem  7 

it  is  a  solution  is  amply  testified  to  by  all  who 
have  sufficiently  examined  the  question ;  there 
are  no  tramps  either  in  Holland,  Belgium,  or 
Switzerland.  The  Belgian  Minister  of  Jus- 
tice in  his  Annual  Report  of  1898  on  the  Col- 
onies of  Merxplas  and  Wortel  said:  "Le  chemi- 
neau  a  disparu  en  Belgique — the  tramp  has 
disappeared  from  Belgium.' '  ! 

Mr.  Preston  Thomas,  General  Inspector 
of  the  Local  Government  Board,  made  a 
special  examination  of  the  tramp  question 
in  Switzerland  and  testified  to  the  same 
effect.2 

But  useful  as  is  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Preston 
Thomas  there  are  some  vital  details  in  the 
Swiss  system  which  escaped  his  attention; 
and  so  although  I  shall  freely  draw  on  Mr. 
Preston  Thomas'  evidence  and  on  the  valu- 
able report  he  submitted,3  I  shall  add  thereto 
the  results  of  my  own  personal  examination 
of  the  colonies  at  Witzwyl  and  of  a  continuous 

1  Bulletin  de  Vinstitut  giniral  psychologique,  D6cembre,  1902 , 
"  La  legislation  6trangere  en  ce  qui  concerne  le  vaga- 
bondage." 

2  Report  of  the  Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy,  vol. 
iii.,  p.  105. 

»  Report  of  the  Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy,  vol. 
iii.,  p.  105. 


8       The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

correspondence  with  Mr.  Kellerhals,  the  Di- 
rector at  Witzwyl  and  Dr.  Guillaume  the  head 
of  the  Swiss  Federal  Department  which  has 
the  control  of  these  institutions. 


CHAPTER  II 

CLASSIFICATION    OF   TRAMPS 

/^BVIOUSLY  the  first  task  before  us  is 
^-^  that  of  classification;  but  the  subject 
of  classification  is  so  arid  that  the  exhaustive 
treatment  of  it  has  been  relegated  to  the  Ap- 
pendix for  the  benefit  of  those  who  are  con- 
tented with  nothing  less  than  the  most  precise 
ideas.  For  the  purposes  of  our  subject  we 
shall  confine  ourselves  to  pointing  out  that 
tramps  include  no  less  than  four  great  groups, 
each  of  which  differs  from  every  other  as  much 
as  a  tattered  rogue  differs  from  a  lawn-sleeved 
bishop: 

I.  The  youth  under  twenty-one  who 
tramps  for  amusement. 
This  class  constitutes  a  large  per 
cent,  of  the  whole  tramp  army. 
II.  The  neuropath ;  not  necessarily  sick 
in  body  but  sick  in  mind,  for  whom 
tramping   is   as  specific   a  symp- 

9 


io      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

torn  of  insanity  as  hallucination 
or  delirium  tremens. 

III.  The   remainder   of    the    able-bodied 

tramps,  who    in   turn    should   be 
divided  into  very  clearly  marked 
groups : 
(i)     Those  anxious  to  work. 

(2)  Those    accustomed    to    casual 

labour  and  willing,  therefore, 
only  to  work  on  odd  jobs. 

(3)  Those  not  willing  to  work  at  all. 

(4)  Misdemeanants. 

IV.  The  non-able-bodied  who  again  should 
be  divided  into  the  following : 

(1)  Blameless  unemployed  who  are 

unable  to  work  through  age, 
illness,  or  accident. 

(2)  Unemployed  whose  capacity  for 

work  has  been  affected  by 
drink, 
(a)  Those  whose  physical  in- 
capacity is  temporary 
and  who  can  within  a 
reasonable  time  recover 
capacity  to  work  upon 
being  removed  from  the 
temptation  to  drink. 


Classification  of  Tramps  1 1 

(b)  Those  whose  incapacity  is 

permanent  but  who  are 
capable  of  being  restored 
to  physical  capacity  after 
a  sufficiently  long  treat- 
ment. 

(c)  Incurables. 
(3)     Misdemeanants. 

The  last  two  groups  III.  and  IV.  are  sub- 
ject again  to  further  subdivision  according 
as  their  vagabondage  is  due  to  temporary  or 
permanent  causes,  to  industrial  crises,  or  to 
incurable  habits;  and  to  a  still  further  sub- 
division according  as  they  are  blameless  or  not. 

It  is  important  to  distinguish  between  the 
able-bodied  and  the  non-able-bodied,  because 
the  problem  as  regards  the  first  is  mainly  a 
problem  of  finding  work,  whereas  the  problem 
as  regards  the  non-able-bodied  is  rather  a 
problem  of  fitting  them  for  work. 

It  is  important  to  distinguish  between  the 
temporary  and  the  permanent,  because  the 
effort  to  secure  employment  for  only  a  brief 
period  must  be  of  a  very  different  character 
from  the  effort  to  secure  employment  for  a 
long  one. 


r 


12      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 


Last  but  not  least  it  is  important  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  blameless  and  the  non- 
blameless,  because  the  treatment  which  will 
be  justifiable  in  the  latter  case  will  not  be 
justifiable  in  the  former,  and  we  find  our- 
selves therefore  obliged  to  divide  our  labour 
colonies  into  two  corresponding  classes,  the 
Free  and  the  Forced:  It  would  be  unjust  as 
well  as  unwise  to  herd  with  battered  tramps 
men  who  are  unfitted  for  work  through  no 
fault  of  their  own, — that  is  to  say,  through 
age,  illness  or  accident — boys  who  have  be- 
come tramps  through  a  pure  spirit  of  adven- 
ture, men  who  have  been  thrown  out  of  work 
and  are  anxiously  looking  for  employment, 
and  that  other  large  class  of  unemployed  who, 
while  appearing  to  belong  to  the  genuine  un- 
employed, have  really  through  long  continued 
unemployment  so  lost  the  habit  of  work  as  to 
be  incapable  of  profiting  by  opportunities  se- 
cured through  exceptional  and  temporary  re- 
lief works. 

This  last  large  class,  which  is  deserving 
of  pity  rather  than  of  blame,  brings  us  to 
the  study  of  the  part  of  this  question  which 
has  least  been  taken  into  consideration  by 
practical   philanthropists.     In  our  classifica- 


Classification  of  Tramps  13 

tion  a  distinction  has  been  carefully  made 
between  able-bodied  anxious  to  work  and 
those  who,  being  accustomed  to  casual  work, 
are  only  willing  to  give  casual  service.  A 
distinction  has  also  been  made  between  those 
who  have  lost  physical  capacity  through  age, 
illness,  or  accident,  and  those  who  have  lost  it 
through  drunkenness.  It  is  very  difficult  to 
determine  at  what  moment  the  able-bodied 
working  man  can  be  blamed  for  lapsing  into 
the  army  of  casual  labourers  and  acquiring 
the  evil  habits  that  result  from  casual  em- 
ployment; and  it  is,  again,  a  difficult  task  to 
state  at  what  moment  a  man  is  to  be  blamed 
for  the  malady  of  the  will  which  brings  him 
to  a  point  where  he  prefers  vagabondage  and 
mendicity  to  performing  any  useful  work  at 
all.  Again,  it  is  difficult  to  say  at  what  time 
a  man  can  be  blamed  who,  after  being  debili- 
tated through  overwork  has  recourse  to 
drink,  and  being  unfitted  for  work  thereby, 
is  driven  to  petty  larceny  and  worse. 

The  problem  presented  to  a  magistrate  by 
every  so-called  vagabond  who  comes  before  him  is 
practically  insoluble  by  him;'  and  it  is  in  great 
part  because  the  problem  is  insoluble  that 
we  find  magistrates  committing  for  short  sen- 


14      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

tences,  and  thus  giving  rise  to  the  "rounder" 
and  the  jail -bird. 

Every  long-time  vagabond,  whether  he  has 
become  so  through  temperamental  deficiency, 
through  unemployment,  or  through  drink, 
wears  the  same  livery  of  rags:  underfed,  under- 
bred, and  misunderstood,  he  stands  before  the 
court  as  a  misdemeanant,  whereas  he  may  be 
only  a  victim — and  a  victim  out  of  whom  there 
is  practically  always  some  and  generally  much 
useful  work  to  be  got.  But  whether  a  victim  or 
not,  he  is  certainly  a  danger  to  the  community ; 
the  few  cents  he  begs,  borrows,  or  steals  are 
spent  in  the  public  house  side  by  side  with  the 
element  of  our  society  most  subject  to  the 
contagion  of  vagabondage;  there  he  relates 
his  adventures,  brags  of  his  independence, 
tempts  his  listeners  to  drink,  and  seduces  the 
young  into  sharing  his  fortunes;  he  spreads 
disease,  physical  and  moral;  leaves  a  legacy 
of  lice  to  every  lodging  where  he  rests;  and 
diligently  undoes  what  little  our  compulsory 
education   contributes  to   good   citizenship.1 

i  It  is  impossible  to  convey  in  a  paragraph  all  the  evils 
that  result  from  vagabondage.  They  can  only  be  gathered 
from  actual  experience  or  voluminous  reading.  Perhaps 
no  one  book  serves  better  to  illustrate  the  extent  of  the  evil 
than  Josiah  Flynt's  Tramping  with  Tramps,  but  this  book 


Classification  of  Tramps  15 

Vagabondage  is  a  veritable  University  of 
Vice ;  for  if  the  university  is  correctly  defined  as 
a  system  for  the  acquisition  of  useless  know- 
ledge, vagabondage  may  be  defined  as  a  sys- 
tem for  the  acquisition  of  unnecessary  vice; 
we  may  be  helpless  as  regards  the  criminal 
instincts  that  seem  to  be  born  in  some  men; 
but  as  regards  the  acquired  habits  that  result 
from  vagabondage  we  are  not  helpless;  that 
our  streets,  highways,  and  lodging  houses  are 
infested  by  vagabonds  is  due  to  our  indiffer- 
ence ;  for  if  American  legislatures  were  to  take 
the  matter  in  hand  vagabondage  and  all  its 
attending  evils  would  disappear  like  magic 
from  American  soil — as  it  has  already  disap- 
peared in  Holland,  Belgium,  and  Switzerland; 
and  not  only  have  labour  colonies  rid  the 
streets  and  highways  of  tramps  in  Holland 
and  Belgium  but  they  have  done  so  inexpen- 

should  be  supplemented  by  the  testimony  taken  before  the 
Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy,  particularly  on  the 
subject  of  the  communication  of  disease  and  vermin.  See 
Report  of  the  Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy,  vol.  ii., 
pp.  105,  203. 

The  interviews  given  to  Dr.  Reitman  and  published  in  the 
daily  press  are  evidence  on  this  subject;  Doctor  Reitman  has 
acquired  his  experience  not  as  Josiah  Flynt  did  by  tramping 
for  the  purpose  of  acquiring  experience  but  as  a  bona  fide 
tramp  having  become  slowly  infected  by  wanderlust  through 
the  habit  of  "train  nipping  "  or  stealing  rides  upon  the  trains. 


16      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

sively  in  Switzerland.  This  it  is  the  object  of 
this  monograph  to  point  out ;  and  to  this  end 
an  effort  will  be  made  briefly  to  recapitulate 
the  systems  adopted  in  various  countries  to 
solve  the  question,  point  out  the  defects  of 
each,  and  conclude  in  favour  of  the  Swiss  plan 
best  developed  at  the  colony  near  Neuchatel 
known  as  Witzwyl. 

There  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  only  one  way 
of  coming  to  a  definite  conclusion  about  the 
particular  class  to  which  a  vagabond  belongs, 
and  this  way  is  to  commit  him  to  an  institu- 
tion where  he  is  obliged  to  work  and  where 
he  is  put  into  such  human  relation  to  the 
surveillants  that  they  can  exercise  a  whole- 
some influence  over  him  if  he  is  sensible  to 
wholesome  influence,  and  if  not  sensible  to 
wholesome  influence  can  subject  him  to  the 
particular  training  his  particular  case  may 
seem  to  require. 

If,  therefore,  by  the  introduction  of  labour 
colonies  the  community  can  be  relieved  of  the 
enormous  expense  in  money  and  human  life 
that  attends  our  present  tramp  system  with- 
out more  expense  than  the  initial  cost  of  land 
and  material — for  tramps  should  themselves 
do  the  construction — and  if  incidentally  the 


Classification  of  Tramps  1 7 

youths  who  constitute  a  large  per  cent,  of  the 
present  tramp  army  can  be  rescued  and  out 
of  the  remainder  all  who  are  capable  of  re- 
form can  be  reformed;  if,  too,  the  substitution 
of  the  labour  colonies  for  workhouses  and 
almshouses  can  greatly  dimmish  the  expense 
and  the  dreariness  of  these  institutions;  if 
lastly  they  can  successfully  substitute  the  per- 
suasion of  kindness  for  the  unkindness  of  co- 
ercion in  the  reforming  of  the  much  abused 
and  little  understood  "hobo"  and  "bum,"  it 
seems  as  though  the  experiment  ought  to  be 
tried. 

Nevertheless  it  must  be  recognised  that 
the  conditions  in  America  are  different  from 
the  conditions  in  Europe  and  that  important 
modifications  will  have  to  be  made  in  view 
thereof.  We  shall  begin  therefore  with  an 
account  of  the  European  colonies  as  they  are 
and  the  lessons  to  be  learned  therefrom  and 
shall  in  a  subsequent  chapter  discuss  American 
conditions  and  the  modifications  which  may 
usefully  be  made  to  the  Swiss  system. 


CHAPTER  III 

LABOUR  COLONIES 

i»IN    Holland,    where    labour   colonies     were 

*  originally  started,  there  is  very  little 
effort  to-day  made  to  reform  the  vagabond. 
The  scheme  originally  proposed  by  General 
van  den  Bosch  included  a  plan  of  reformation 
by  slowly  spreading  the  population  of  labour 
colonies  in  homes  of  their  own  upon  the  land. 
The  example  set  us  by  Holland  though 
not  beyond  criticism  must  not  be  under- 
estimated.  In  the  first  place,  the  merit  of 
^original  initiative  belongs  to  Holland;  in  the 
second  place,  Holland  has  demonstrated  that 
by  this  system  the  streets  and  highways  can 
be  rid  of  tramps,  and  that  the  cost  of  doing 
so  through  the  agency  of  labour  colonies  is 
relatively  small. 

But  in  two  respects  the  Dutch  colonies 
fall  short.  They  are  not  self-supporting  and 
they  have  practically  abandoned  the  effort 
to  reform. 

18 


Labour  Colonies  19 

.£  In  Belgium  which  next  deserves  our  atten- 
tion in  order  of  time — for  the  labour  colony 
system  in  Belgium  is  a  direct  outgrowth  of 
the  same  plan  in  Holland — we  have  an 
institution  which  demonstrates  the  extremely 
valuable  and  even -artistic  work  that  can  be 
got  from  the  vagabond^  and  confirms  the 
experience  of  Holland  that  at  a  comparatively 
insignificant  cost  vagabondage  can  be  abol- 
ished. The  remarkable  institution  of  Merx-"> 
plas  is  invaluable  as  an  object-lesson.  There 
is  hardly  a  trade  that  is  not  represented  there. 
The  enormous  buildings  of  which  it  is  com-^ 
posed  are  the  work  of  the  vagabonds.  They 
have  built  the  gas  house  and  the  machines 
used  on  the  place,  including  the  most  delicate 
electrical  apparatus.  It  was  among  the  vag- 
abonds that  were  found  the  architects  who 
drew  up  plans  for  the  buildings,  the  draughts- 
men who  furnished  the  designs  for  their  car- 
pets, and  the  sculptors  who  modelled  the 
statues  that  decorate  their  chapel.  Every 
kind  of  weaving  is  done  at  Merxplas,  from  the 
commonest  to  the  most  perfected.  Tiles,  too, 
are  manufactured  there  of  every  degree  of 
quality  and  style;  also  waggons,  buttons, 
bags,  and  a  great  variety  of  other  articles. 


20      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

Merxplas  is  indeed  an  industrial  village 
rather  than  a  farm  colony.  The  farm  build- 
ings are  models  of  cleanliness  and  hygiene, 
but  the  financial  result  therefrom  is  relatively 
small.  This,  perhaps,  is  one  of  the  features  of 
Merxplas  which  lends  itself  most  to  criticism, 
for  we  shall  find  when  we  study  the  colonies 
of  Switzerland,  which  are  practically  self- 
supporting,  that  they  are  farms  first  and 
foremost,  and  the  industrial  element  is  only 
introduced  in  aid  of  the  farm.  But  in  criticis- 
ing this  feature  of  Merxplas  account  must  be 
taken  of  its  peculiar  conditions.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  of  very  great  size,  accommodating 
no  less  than  five  to  six  thousand  inmates. 
Amongst  these  there  is  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  men  who  cannot  be  described  as  able- 
bodied.  Moreover,  the  military  system  of 
surveillance  in  force  there  creates  a  peni- 
tentiary atmosphere  which  is  at  once  incon- 
sistent with  profitable  agricultural  work  and 
inconducive  to  reform.  It  is  probable  that 
in  dealing  with  such  a  large  mass  of  men  as  a 
population  of  six  thousand,  nothing  less  than 
a  military  system  of  surveillance  is  possible, 
and  that  the  Witzwyl  system  of  employing  as 
surveillants  men  who  themselves  work  with 


Labour  Colonies  21 

the  inmates  would  prove  inadequate^  Suffice 
it  to  say  here  that  once  the  mistake  is  made 
of  creating  a  farm  colony  of  so  large  a  popu- 
lation as  six  thousand,  military  surveil- 
lance is  probably  indispensable,  and  with 
military  surveillance  comes  the  inevitable  con- 
sequence that  discipline  is  substituted  for  re- 
formation and  compulsion  for  co-operation.^ 
Nevertheless  it  is  but  fair  to  state  that  there  is 
at  Merxplas  an  admirable  system  for  rewarding 
the  colonists  for  good  work  by  the  distribution 
of  tokens,  which  enable  them  to  purchase 
tobacco,  coffee,  chocolate,  and  other  deli- 
cacies at  the  canteen.  The  impression  pro- 
duced by  Merxplas  is  that  it  is  as  perfectly 
conducted  a  penal  and  industrial  settlement 
as  is  consistent  with  its  nature  and  size,  and 
that  all  the  features  open  to  criticism  are  the 
necessary  result  of  these.  For  example, 
although  the  'Opinion  largely  prevails  that 
manufacture  is  more  profitable  than  agri- 
culture, on  a  careful  examination  of  the 
subject  it  will  be  found  that  while  land  is  a 
difficult  thing  from  which  to  derive  income, 
it  is  an  easy  thing  from  which  to  derive 
nourishment,  and  thus  agriculture  is  better 
suited  to  a  colony  of  tramps  than  manu- 


22      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

1  facture.  To  make  money  out  of  manufacture 
/  it  is  essential  that  the  labour  employed  be 
skilled,  whereas  it  is  possible  to  get  a  liveli- 
hood out  of  land  with  labour  that  is  unskilled. 
Tramp  labour  will  always  be  in  part  unskilled. 
;  Agriculture,  therefore,  is  better  suited  to 
tramp  colonies  than  manufacture. 

Again,  a  tramp  colony  which  is  essen- 
tially agricultural  and  only  secondarily  in- 
dustrial has  the  great  advantage  that  it 
eliminates  the  competition  with  existing  in- 
dustries and  free  labour  that  all  along  has 
prevented  the  working  man  from  giving  an 
unbiassed  study  to  this  question.  Thus  the 
Swiss  colonies  can  be  said  not  to  compete  at 
all  with  either  free  industry  or  free  labour, 
whereas  at  Merxplas,  although  the  author- 
ities have  endeavoured  to  confine  their  in- 
dustries as  much  as  possible  to  things  which 
would  not  compete,  they  have,  nevertheless, 
been  led  by  the  desire  to  reduce  expenses 
into  hiring  out  their  labour  to  contractors: 
as  for  example,  in  the  manufacture  of  buttons. 
It  is  inevitable  that  wherever  the  industrial 
element  predominates  over  the  agricultural 
there  will  be  a  temptation  to  sacrifice  re- 
form to  finance,  whereas  where  the  agricul- 


Labour  Colonies  23 

tural  feature  predominates  over   the  indus- 
trial, this  temptation  is  eliminated. 

It  is  probable  that  no  American  will  visit 
Merxplas  without  deciding  that  in  the  first 
place  its  success  as  an  industrial  establish- 
ment, with  no  better  material  than  the  re- 
fuse of  the  population,  is  an  immense  tribute 
n  to  the  intelligence,  patience,  and  skill  of  it$ 
j  Director,  Mr.  Louis  Stroobant,  bu£  that  noti> 
withstanding  this  success,  it  is  ?iot\an  institu- 
tion which  it  would  be  desirable  to  transplant 
into  America.  The  hiring  out  of  labour  by 
contract,  the  large  production  of  articles  that 
compete  with  the  products  of  free  labour,  the 
presence,  although  in  a  separate  wing,  of  such 
vicious  persons  as  souteneurs,  will  discredit 
the  institution  to  an  American  critic.  Merx- 
plas therefore  must  be  regarded  as  of  value 
in  demonstrating  how  much  work  can  be  ob- 
tained from  the  labour  of  tramps,  but  at  the 
same  time  as  furnishing  a  warning  against  the 
creation  in  America  of  large  industrial  vil- 
lages when  small  farm  colonies  are  equally 
available. 

Germany  can  contribute  little  of  interest 
to  the  American  student,  for  although  there 
are  many  admirable  labour  colonies  there — 


24     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

and  indeed  the  one  at  Luhlerheim  must  be 
reckoned  one  of  the  best  intentioned  in  the 
world — the  colony  system  is  grafted  upon  a 
way-station  system  (Herbergen)  supported 
by  private  philanthropy,  which  is  believed  by 
many  to  increase  vagabondage  rather  than 
suppress  it,1  and  so  far  they  have  not  suc- 
ceeded in  paying  their  expenses  or  to  any 
material  extent  reforming  their  inmates. 

It  is  to  Switzerland  therefore,  that  we  at 
last  come  for  a  final  word  upon  this  subject. 

Mr.  Preston  Thomas  begins  his  report 
already  alluded  to  as  to  the  methods  of  dealing 
with  vagrancy  in  Switzerland  by  stating  that 
the  exact  extent  of  the  diminution  of  men- 
dicity in  Switzerland  "  cannot  be  shown  from 
statistics,  for  they  do  not  exist ;  but  it  is  gen- 
erally admitted."  He  proceeds  to  compare 
the  conditions  which  prevail  in  Italy,  where 
it  is  impossible  to  take  a  walk  without  being 
pestered  for  alms  at  every  turn,  with  the 
cessation  of  all  such  importunity  ' '  as  soon  as 
the  Swiss  frontier  is  crossed."  Nevertheless, 
however  true  this  may  be  of  most  of  the 

i  Report  of  the  Departmental  Committee  on  Vagrancy,  Q  3843. 
Paying  travellers  in  the  Herbergen  increased  from  1899  to 
1902  by  about  one-third  and  non-paying  by  two-thirds. 


Labour  Colonies  25 

cantons  of  Switzerland,  the  fact  that  every 
canton  has  the  making  and  execution  of  its 
own  laws  on  the  subject  makes  it  impossible 
to  lay  down  any  general  rule  applicable  to 
the  whole  country.  For  the  purposes  of  this 
monograph,  therefore,  the  word  Switzerland 
will  be  used  to  refer  only  to  the  cantons  of 
Switzerland  in  which  the  laws  regarding 
vagrancy  are  of  the  latest  type. 

These  laws  begin  by  separating  the  genuine 
unemployed  from  the  thieves,  loafers,  and 
ne'er-do-wells  who  render  this  question  so 
complicated  in  America.  This  is  done  by  a 
system  of  travellers'  relief  book,  issued  by  the 
Swiss  Intercantonal  Union,  which  includes 
fourteen  out  of  the  twenty-two  cantons  of 
which  Switzerland  is  composed.  This  travel- 
lers' relief  book  sets  forth  all  the  facts  neces- 
sary to  identify  and  certify  to  the  good  faith 
of  its  owner,  and  the  possession  of  this  book 
is  sufficient  to  permit  its  owner  to  travel 
through  the  fourteen  cantons  above  men- 
tioned without  any  work  whatever  being 
exacted  from  him.1 

1  Admirable  though  be  the  system  of  travellers'  relief 
books,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  the  plan  would  find 
favour  in  America.  The  travellers'  relief  book  corresponds 
very  closely  to  what  was  known    as  the   livret    required  by 


26      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

In  this  respect  the  Swiss  system  differs 
from  the  German  under  which  the  wayfarer  is 
required  to  perform  two  hours'  work  to  help 
pay  for  his  food  and  lodging.  It  is  to  the 
obvious  advantage  of  the  whole  community 
that  every  man  be  employed,  that  is  to  say, 
be  engaged  in  the  work  of  production,  in  order 
that  he  may  contribute  his  quota  of  production 
to  make  up  for  what  he  consumes.     Even, 

French  law  under  the  Empire.  This  livret  was  strongly 
objected  to  by  the  French  working  men,  for  it  was  used  by 
the  employers  as  a  method  for  blacklisting  their  discharged 
employees. 

In  1890  the  livret  was  abolished  and  there  was  substituted 
for  it  an  obligation  on  the  part  of  every  employer  to  certify 
the  date  on  which  the  working  man  in  question  entered  his 
employment  and  the  date  on  which  he  left  it.  It  is  probable 
that  the  American  working  man  would  have  the  same  objec- 
tion to  the  travellers'  relief  book  as  the  French  working  man 
had  to  the  livret,  and  it  is  probable  also  that  a  certificate 
which  confined  itself  to  a  statement  of  the  dates  upon  which 
the  employee  entered  and  left  would  suffice,  particularly 
if  coupled  with  some  such  method  of  identification  as  the 
finger-print.  But  by  investigating  and  recording  every 
questionable  certificate,  even  the  finger-print  would  be 
superfluous,  and  as  it  savours  of  the  police  it  ought  to  be 
avoided  if  possible. 

The  Swiss  system  of  way  stations  must  not  be  confounded 
with  the  German  Herbergen.  These  last,  because  managed 
by  private  charity,  can  hardly  exercise  the  scrutiny  which 
seems  indispensable  with  a  view  to  discriminating  the  tramp 
from  the  unemployed.  The  result  of  this  is  that  the  tramp 
profits  by  a  system  intended  only  for  the  unemployed,  and 
vagabondage  increases  rather  than  diminishes  in  consequence. 


Labour  Colonies  27 

therefore,  if  there  were  no  mercy  in  our  hearts 
for  the  genuine  unemployed,  it  would  be  an 
act  of  wise  administration  to  provide  the 
genuine  unemployed  with  permanent  work 
at  the  earliest  possible  moment.  The  sooner 
he  gets  this  permanent  work  the  better,  not 
only  for  him,  but  for  the  entire  community. 
The  fitful  work  done  by  the  genuine  unem- 
ployed during  two  hours  per  day  would  but 
little  diminish  the  cost  of  maintaining  the 
wayfarer,  whereas  it  would  sensibly  increase 
the  difficulty  of  finding  a  new  place.  It 
would  probably  cost  as  much  to  provide 
two  hours'  work  for  the  wayfarer  as  the  work 
he  could  do  would  pay  for.  The  Swiss  plan, 
therefore,  of  making  the  wayfarer  system  as 
simple  as  possible  and  hurrying  the  unem- 
ployed rapidly  to  permanent  work  seems  pre- 
ferable to  the  plan  in  force  in  Germany. 

Having  by  this  travellers'  relief  book  given 
every  genuine  unemployed  a  method  of  prov- 
ing his  good  faith,  all  other  vagrants  are 
committed  to  institutions  so  that  they  can 
no  longer  complicate  the  unemployed  problem 
and  infest  the  public  highways.  This  method 
of  treatment  may  seem  harsh  to  those  who 
persist  in  misunderstanding  the  nature  of  the 


28      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

labour  colony.  So  long  as  it  is  believed  to 
represent  a  system  of  punishment,  com- 
mittal to  a  labour  colony  is  hardly  to  be 
distinguished  from  committal  to  prison.  If, 
however,  the  labour  colony  is  recognised  not 
to  be  a  place  of  imprisonment  at  all,  but  on 
the  contrary  a  home  where  the  indigent  can 
be  cared  for,  provided  with  work,  and  given 
habits  of  work  that,  when  he  is  capable  of 
acquiring  them,  will  fit  him  once  more  for 
social  life,  committal  to  a  labour  colony, 
instead  of  being  regarded  as  a  hardship  or  an 
infraction  of  personal  liberty,  will  be  recog- 
nised as  constituting  a  salutary  system  insti- 
gated by  justice  to  the  indigent  and  above 
all  as  a  system  of  social  defence  against  all 
the  evil,  the  crime,  and  the  misery  that  result 
from  existing  conditions. 

Again  such  a  home  should  not  be  regarded 
as  either  a  charity  or  a  correction;  some 
contend  that  it  represents  a  public  obligation: 
civilisation  has  taken  from  men  the  right 
to  hunt  for  food,  to  pluck  the  fruits  of  the 
earth,  to  avail  themselves  of  the  natural 
methods  for  securing  sustenance;  it  has 
substituted  in  most  respects  a  better  plan 
which  secures  for  the  vast  majority  a  higher 


Labour  Colonies  29 

standard  of  living  than  could  be  obtained 
in  a  natural  state;  but  the  system  breaks 
down  at  certain  points  all  the  time  and  at  all 
points  in  occasional  crises;  it  seems  to  be 
the  duty  therefore  of  the  system  to  provide 
food  and  shelter  for  its  innocent  victims. 

Here  we  find  the  usefulness  of  the  classi- 
fication already  made  according  to  culpability 
and  the  necessity  of  distinguishing  between 
the  thieves,  loafers,  and  ne'er-do-wells  and 
those  who  are  unfitted  for  work  through  no 
fault  of  their  own — that  is  to  say  through 
age,  illness,  or  accident.  The  Swiss  have 
recognised  the  importance  of  this  classifica- 
tion by  creating  two  kinds  of  labour  colonies, 
essentially  different  from  one  another :  the  so- 
called  forced  labour  colonies  or  Zwangsar- 
beits-Anstalten  to  which  are  committed  all 
culpable  vagrants;  and  free  labour  colonies, 
the  doors  of  which  are  open  to  all  indigent 
persons  who  are  not  culpable. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  it  is/ 
impossible    for    a   magistrate    to    distinguish 
between  the  culpable  and  the  non-culpable 
with  such  slender  information  as  can  be  pro-\ 
duced  when  a  " homeless" is  brought  before  him 
for  sentence,  and  that  it  is  the  impossibility  of  i 


30     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

coming  to  a  determination  on  this  essential 
question  which  has  brought  about  the  magis- 
terial habit  of  committing  all  vagrants  to  the 
workhouse  for  a  short,  expensive,  and  ineffect- 
ual term.  The  two  classes  of  labour  colonies 
established  in  Switzerland  make  it  possible 
for  a  magistrate  at  once  to  assign  all  vagrants 
who  come  before  him  to  one  or  other  of 
them,  leaving  the  ultimate  disposition  of  the 
vagrant  to  depend  upon  his  conduct  in  the 
labour  colony  itself.  The  magistrate  must 
often  regret  having  to  punish  a  vagrant  at 
all;  punishment  is  unjust  to  the  blameless 
vagrant  and  injurious  to  the  body  politic, 
for  by  punishing  a  blameless  vagrant  with 
imprisonment,  the  magistrate  has  given  him 
the  first  push  over  the  fatal  slope  to  pauper- 
ism or  crime  from  which  he  is  not  likely  to  re- 
cover. The  existence,  however,  of  two  kinds 
of  labour  colonies,  one  of  which  is  free  and  con- 
stitutes a  home  where  the  unfortunate  can  be 
cared  for,  and  given  such  work  as  he  can  ac- 
complish, makes  it  possible  for  the  magistrate 
to  dispose  of  all  cases  at  once,  and  thereby 
clear  the  streets  and  highways  of  all  the 
unemployed,  blameless  and  not  blameless,  that 
now  infest  them  in  America.    Obviously  under 


Labour  Colonies  31 

such  a  system  magistrates  will  commit  va- 
grants not  otherwise  guilty  of  misdemeanour 
or  crime  to  the  free  colony,  relying  upon  the 
director's  applying  to  the  court  for  transfer 
to  the  forced  labour  colony,  should  occasion 
subsequently  arise  therefor.  In  this  fashion 
no  disgrace  ought  to  attach  to  such  com- 
mittal, and  some  better  word  than  committal 
should  be  found  for  such  cases.1  Magistrates 
will  thus  be  relieved  of  the  intolerable 
difficulty  under  which  they  now  labour  in 
dealing  with  vagrancy  cases;  they  can  dis- 
pose of  them  all;  the  genuine  unemployed 
ought  never  to  come  before  them;  if  they 
do  their  place  is  the  wayside  station  and  not 
the  labour  colony;  the  incorrigible  rogues 
go  to  the  forced  labour  colony,  and  all  the 
rest  to  the  free. 

The  advantage  of  this  system  ought  not  to 
need  comment;  it  is  the  only  way  of  taking 
the  vagrant  off  the  street  and  highroad ;  but 
there  is  an  incidental  advantage  which  cannot 
be  too  strongly  insisted  on.  The  Report  of 
the    Departmental     Committee     repeats     the 

1  An  attempt  to  leave  the  free  colony  without  the  consent 
of  the  director  ought  to  constitute  an  offence  punishable  by 
committal  to  the  forced  colony. 


32      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

experience  of  all  those  who  have  for  the  last 
century  dealt  with  this  subject:  that  va- 
grancy is  kept  alive  by  indiscriminate  alms- 
giving and  such  charities  as  shelters,  soup 
kitchens,  etc.  Mr.  Preston  Thomas  intimates 
that  vagrants  have  disappeared  from  Swiss 
highways  because  it  is  a  misdemeanour  under 
Swiss  law  to  give  alms.  It  is  probable  that 
in  this  one  point  Mr.  Preston  Thomas  is 
mistaken.  The  giving  of  alms  is  not  a  mis- 
demeanour in  Holland  nor  in  that  "classic 
ground  of  poverty"  Belgium,  and  yet  there 
are  no  vagrants  to  be  seen  on  the  streets 
or  highways  of  either  of  these  countries. 
Almsgiving  is  the  necessary  result  of  vagrancy — 
not  vagrancy  the  result  of  almsgiving;  the 
evils  undoubtedly  react  on  one  another,  but 
so  long  as  there  are  merciful  hearts  in  Amer- 
ica the  aspect  of  a  shivering  or  hungry  tramp 
will  draw  money  from  a  well-filled  pocket; 
it  will  even  draw  money  from  the  ill -filled 
pocket  of  a  working  man — and  all  honour 
to  the  working  man  that  it  is  so.  To  make  it 
a  misdemeanour  to  relieve  want,  would  be  a 
crime,  unless,  as  in  Switzerland,  every  case  of 
want  is  provided  for.  This  is  exactly  what 
the  Swiss  system  of  two-fold  labour  colonies 


Labour  Colonies  33 

accomplishes.  But  to  make  almsgiving  a 
misdemeanour  is  totally  unnecessary  if  the 
Swiss  system  is  introduced:  for  the  introduc- 
tion of  it  will  remove  all  temptation;  there 
will  be  no  one  left  upon  whom  the  injury  of 
almsgiving  can  be  inflicted. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SWISS  LABOUR  COLONIES 

'"PHERE  are  a  great  many  labour  colonies 
^  in  Switzerland,  but  attention  will  be  di- 
rected only  to  one  pair  of  them,  which  adjoin 
each  other  at  Witzwyl  and  Tannenhof  respec- 
tively, situated  between  Lake  Neuchatel  and 
Lake  de  Bienne. 

The  colony  of  Witzwyl  is  a  forced  labour 
colony  instituted  by  the  canton  of  Berne.  The 
colony  at  Tannenhof  is  a  free  colony  started 
by  individual  philanthropists.  _  These  two 
colonies  had  separate  directors  until  the  in- 
creasing expense  of  Tannenhof  and  the  dimin- 
ishing expense  of  Witzwyl  induced  the  board 
of  directors  of  the  Tannenhof  institution  to 
offer  the  directorship  of  the  Tannenhof  colony 
to  Mr,  Otto  Kellerhals,  who  had  succeeded 
in  making  the  colony  of  Witzwyl  self-support- 
ing. >They  are  now,  therefore,  both  under 
the  same  direction.  ^  These  colonies  are  both 
of  them  small.     On  the  31st  of  December, 

34 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  35 

1906,  there  were  156  inmates  at  Witzwyl,  and 
thirty-nine  at  Tannenhof.  Both  these  colo- 
nies are  essentially  agricultural  colonies,  and 
although  there  are  workshops,  they  are 
purely  secondary,  the  object  of  them  being 
to  utilise  the  services  of  those  who  are  spe- 
cially fitted  for  industrial  work,  those  who  are 
unfitted  for  agricultural  work,  and  even  the 
agricultural  labourers  during  that  part  of  the 
day  and  the  season  in  which  it  is  impossible 
to  work  in  the  fields.  The  first  thing  that 
strikes  the  visitor  at  Witzwyl  is  the  absence 
of  all  those  features  which  render  Merxplas 
attractive.  The  roads  are  not  kept  like  the 
carriage  drive  of  a  private  park;  the  borders 
are  not  machine-mown  and  rolled,  nor  are  the 
hedges  trimmed  like  those  of  a  suburban  villa. 
The  inmates  do  not  work  in  squads,  and  the 
surveillants  are  not  armed,  nor  is  there  the  at- 
mosphere of  military  discipline  and  order  which 
characterises  the  Belgian  institution.  Never- 
theless, the  roads,  though  inelegant,  are  good 
farm  roads,  the  buildings  are  sound  farm 
buildings;  the  surveillants  are  hardly  dis- 
tinguishable from  the  inmates,  and  work  with 
them.  £  To  this,  last  feature  the  director 
attaches  great  and  merited  importance.     As 


36      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

he  says  in  his  report  of  1904,  by  working  with 
the  men  "it  is  easier  to  gain  their  confidence 
than  by  polished  discourse  in  an  office  kept 
warm  in  the  winter  and  fresh  in  the  summer, 
where  the  inmate  will  never  be  able  to  rid 
himself  of  the  impression  that  his  superior 
has  no  idea  of  the  difficulties  he  has  to  over- 
come nor  of  the  hardship  of  the  work  he  is 
called  upon  to  undergo."  Moreover,  the 
surveillants,  by  working  with  the  inmates,  not 
only  earn  their  wages  but  serve  by  their  exam- 
ple to  create  the  moral  atmosphere  indispen- 
sable for  the  success  of  such  an  institution. 

The  nourishment  is  not  only  sufficient  but 
strengthening.  The  director  states  that  good 
nourishment  is  the  best  means  for  curing 
drunkards  and  those  who  have  fallen  into  a 
condition  of  physical  degeneration. 

There  are  very  few  escapes:  from  two  to 
five  per  annum.  There  are  two  surveillants 
for  ten  to  twelve  inmates  at  Witzwyl.  Every 
inmate  has  a  cell  of  his  own,  which  is  locked 
upon  him  at  night.  These  cells  are  lit  by 
electricity,  and  the  inmates  are  encouraged 
to  decorate  them  so  as  to  give  them  as  home- 
like an  appearance  as  possible.  The  walls  of 
some  of  them  are  covered  with  pictures  cut 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  37 

from  newspapers,  bits  of  carved  wood,  family 
photographs,  evergreens,  rushes,  and  other 
inexpensive  methods  of  decoration.  Con- 
versation is  not  forbidden  during  work-time, 
but  the  presence  of  a  surveillant  keeps  it  free 
from  the  evils  which  penitentiary  conversa- 
tion is  likel  y  to  involve.  There  are  punishment 
cells  which  are  similar  to  the  other  cells  except 
that  a  plank  is  substituted  for  a  bed.  Months 
often  pass  without  using  these  cells,  and  then, 
again,  it  is  sometimes  necessary  to  use  them 
two  or  three  times  in  a  single  month.  Inmates 
who  do  not  yield  to  the  good  influence  of  the 
place  are  brought  by  the  director  before  a 
magistrate,  and  sent  to  a  penitentiary.  Those 
inmates  who  are  deserving  get  Fr.  5  (about 
one  dollar)  a  month  for  their  work. 

These  are  the  financial  results  of  the  year 
1905: 

The    proceeds    of    the    workshop 

amounted  to Fr.  12,202 .00 

Proceeds  of  agriculture 140,549.41 

After  having  paid  all  their  expenses  there 
remained  a  deficit  of  Fr.  19,957.95.  But  the 
inmates  during  the  year  added  the  following 
improvements : 


3&      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

A  shed  at  Lindenhof Fr.  1 1 ,800.00 

A  stable  for  cows 40,200.00 

Installation  of  electricity  at  Eschen- 

hof 7,000.00 

Installation  of  water-pipe 4,500.00 

Increase  in  machinery,  tools,  etc. . .  43,573.45 

Fr.  107,073.45 

Deducting  from  this  sum  the  deficit  of  Fr. 
19,957.95  which  was  furnished  by  the  State, 
the  balance  shows  a  profit  of  Fr.87,1 15.50 
represented  by  new  buildings,  machines,  tools, 
and  improvements. 

This  excellent  financial  result  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  director  is  a  skilled  farmer. 
Witzwyl,  before  it  was  purchased  by  the 
canton  of  Berne,  was  exploited  by  a  company 
at  a  loss  so  great  that  the  company  failed, 
and  it  was  put  up  at  public  auction.  Mr. 
Kellerhals,  by  the  application  to  this  domain 
of  sound  agricultural  methods,  has  made  it 
pay.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the 
colony  is  agricultural  rather  than  industrial. 
It  will  be  seen  that  the  proceeds  for  agricul- 
ture for  1905  amounted  to  Fr. 140, 549. 41, 
whereas  those  from  the  workshops  amounted 
only    to    Fr.  1 2,202.     The    expenses    of    sur- 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  39 

veillance  disappear  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
surveillants  earn  their  salary  by  working 
with  the  inmates. 

But  this  is  not  all.  This  colony  not  only 
manages  to  pay  its  expenses,  but  also,  by  a 
very  simple  method,  reforms  all  those  capa- 
ble of  reformation.  The  inmates  are  offered 
at  the  expiration  of  their  term  the  choice 
of  working  for  a  period  at  the  free  colony 
of  Tannenhof  or  of  working  in  some  of  the 
numerous  small  colonies  which  the  director 
is  engaged  in  instituting  around  Witzwyl. 
This  is  perhaps  the  feature  of  Witzwyl  which 
is  most  worthy  of  our  consideration.  It  repre- 
sents the  natural  growth  of  such  an  institution 
as  Witzwyl  and  Tannenhof  under  the  direc- 
tion of  a  man  who  is  as  much  concerned  with 
reforming  his  inmates  as  with  making  the 
institution  pay.  Tannenhof  includes  not  only 
vagrants  but  also  indigent  persons  of  the 
canton  who  are  unfitted  by  age,  illness,  or 
accident  from  earning  their  bread  in  the  open 
market.  The  tariff  of  wages  given  at  Tannen- 
hof is  therefore  low,  and  able-bodied  inmates 
of  Witzwyl  are  unwilling  to  work  at  Tannen- 
hof on  account  of  the  low  rate  of  wages 
prevailing    there.      This    suggested    to    the 


40      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

director  the  idea  of  organising  around  Witzwyl 
small  colonies  to  which  the  able-bodied  in- 
mates of  Witzwyl  could  be  sent  after  the  ex- 
piration of  their  term  and  where  they  could 
be  at  once  employed  at  a  fair  salary,  and  re- 
moved from  the  temptation  to  drink.  There 
have  sprung  around  Witzwyl  therefore  such 
colonies  as  Nusshof,  Neuerhof,  Eschenhof, 
and  Birkenhof ,  where  the  inmates  of  Witzwyl 
at  the  expiration  of  their  term  can  not  only 
save  money  but  be  gradually  prepared  for 
restoration  to  the  open  labour  market.  In 
the  Appendix  will  be  found  a  form  of  con- 
tract which  is  signed  by  these  inmates  at  the 
expiration  of  their  term  in  the  forced  colony 
whereby  they  agree  to  work  for  a  fixed  term. 
At  these  sub-colonies  the  inmates  eat  with 
their  employers.  They  are  allowed  to  smoke ; 
they  have  good  nourishment;  they  are  not 
confined  in  their  cells,  and  they  generally 
come  to  such  a  good  understanding  with  the 
managers  that  after  departure  they  often 
return  on  a  friendly  visit.  The  director 
has  even,  in  a  very  small  way,  begun  recon- 
stituting scattered  families  by  furnishing 
them  with  a  cottage  for  which  they  pay  Fr.8o 
(about  sixteen  dollars)  rent  a  year,  by  em- 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  41 

ploying  them  on  the  colony  and  by  furnishing 
to  their  wives  and  children  lodging  for  a  cow 
and  ground  enough  to  cultivate  vegetables. 
This  part  of  the  experiment  is  comparatively 
new,  but  the  director  states  that  already  some 
families  are  in  a  position  which  has  made  it 
possible  for  them  not  only  to  support  them- 
selves but  also  to  begin  to  put  away  money. 

The  sub-colonies  above  referred  to  derive 
their  names  from  the  character  of  the  trees 
planted  around  the  buildings.  Thus  Nusshof 
derives  its  name  from  the  walnut  tree,  Birken- 
hof  from  the  birch,  Eschenhof  from  the  ash. 
The  same  rate  of  wages  does  not  prevail  in  all 
of  them  or  for  every  inmate,  but  at  Nusshof 
they  generally  receive  Fr.  40  a  month  in 
addition  to  their  board  and  lodging.  One 
of  the  inmates  there  at  this  time  has  been 
convicted  over  fifty  times  for  vagabondage; 
after  having  served  his  time  at  Witzwyl  he 
himself  asked  to  go  to  Nusshof,  and  he  has 
already  saved  there  over  four  hundred  francs. 

It  seems  unnecessary  to  enter  into  any 
extensive  description  of  Tannenhof.  The 
cellular  system  of  course  does  not  prevail. 
It  is  an  establishment  where  an  effort  is  made 
to  get  the  most  work  out  of  the  inmates  con- 


42      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

sistent  with  their  physical  condition.  Of 
course  Tannenhof  does  not  pay  its  expenses; 
it  cannot  be  expected  to  do  so  in  view  of  the 
character  of  its  inmates.  There  is  one  fea- 
ture, however,  about  Tannenhof  which  ought 
not  to  be  lost  sight  of:  practically  all  the 
inmates  do  some  work;  the  old  men  drive 
carts,  care  for  cattle,  do  light  gardening,  pick 
vegetables;  and  it  is  the  experience  of  the 
director  that  they  are  much  happier  when  so 
engaged  than  when  allowed  to  remain  idle. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  women,  who  practi- 
cally all  help  in  domestic  work. 

As  has  already  been  stated,  there  are  many 
other  colonies  of  this  kind  in  Switzerland; 
one,  situated  in  the  canton  of  Appenzell, 
also  practically  meets  its  expenses,  but  Witz- 
wyl  is  the  only  one  which  is  surrounded  by 
such  sub-colonies  as  Nusshof,  Neuerhof,  etc., 
and  in  this  respect  Switzerland  offers  an 
example  which  no  country  that  is  contem- 
plating the  institution  of  labour  colonies  can 
afford  to  neglect.  The  fact,  however,  that 
although  all  the  Swiss  labour  colonies  do  not 
make  their  expenses,  they  are  run  upon  a 
much  cheaper  plan  than  at  Merxplas,  seems 
to   prove   that   a   small   agricultural   colony 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  43 

can  be  run  at  a  smaller  expense  than  a  large 
industrial  one.  Again,  the  juxtaposition  of 
free  and  forced  labour  colonies  under  the  same 
director  permits  of  the  transfer  of  inmates 
from  one  to  the  other  with  the  least  possible 
difficulty  and  friction.  It  would  of  course  not 
do  to  leave  such  transfer  entirely  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  director;  he  should  in  every 
case  be  required  to  bring  the  matter  before 
a  magistrate,  and  whenever  it  is  suggested  to 
transfer  an  inmate  from  a  free  to  a  forced 
labour  colony,  the  inmate  ought  to  have 
counsel  assigned  to  him  upon  such  a  pro- 
ceeding, if  he  desires  it.  The  same  thing 
applies  to  the  transfer  of  an  inmate  from  a 
forced  labour  colony  to  a  penitentiary.  On 
the  other  hand,  all  the  inmates  of  a  penitentiary 
ought  to  serve  an  apprenticeship  in  a  forced 
labour  colony,  and  through  some  such  sub- 
colony  as  Nusshof  become  gradually  fitted 
for  return  to  normal  conditions. 

The  advantages  of  small  agricultural  over 
large  industrial  colonies  may  be  summarized 
as  follows: 

1.  They  render  possible  a  daily  contact 
of  the  director  and  the  surveillants  with  the 
inmates,   and,   as   a  consequence,  permit  of 


44      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

a  reforming  influence  impossible  in  a  large 
colony. 

2.  Agricultural  colonies  run  along  the  lines 
of  Witzwyl  do  not  compete  with  free  labour. 
It  has  been  objected  that  they  might  do  so. 
It  is  obvious  that  if  a  labour  colony  were  set 
down  in  the  midst  of  a  suburb  devoted  to 
market  gardening,  the  products  of  such  a 
labour  colony  would  interfere  with  free  labour. 
The  institution  of  such  a  colony  in  such  a 
place  is  to  be  severely  deprecated.  It  would 
be  unwise  to  organise  such  a  colony  in  such  a 
place  not  only  out  of  regard  for  free  labour, 
but  also  out  of  regard  for  the  institution  itself. 
Such  an  institution,  unless  under  exceptional 
circumstances,  ought  to  be  established  in  a 
neighbourhood  not  already  devoted  to  market 
gardening  and  preferably  upon  ground  that 
needs  the  application  of  extraordinary  human 
effort  and  human  art  to  make  it  valua- 
ble. It  is  one  of  the  advantages  that  la- 
bour colonies  offer  that  the  very  ground 
which  is  unfitted  for  free  labour  is  eminently 
fitted  for  institutional  labour.  It  is  seldom 
profitable  to  apply  free  labour  to  the  reclama- 
tion of  bad  land,  for  the  obvious  reason  that 
free   labour   is   expensive.    When,   however, 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  45 

labour  is  cheap,  as  in  labour  colonies,  it  can 
be  safely  applied  to  the  reclamation  of  waste 
land,  and  furnishes  the  additional  advantage 
to  the  community  of  reforming  not  only  the 
land  but  the  labourer  also.  Forced  labour 
ought  to  be  applied  to  reclaiming  land,  free 
and  reformed  labour  to  tilling  the  land  re- 
claimed. The  application  of  waste  labour  to 
waste  land  reforms  the  one  and  reclaims  the 
other. 

The  problem  how  to  avoid  injurious  com- 
petition with  free  labour  is  essentially  a  local 
one  and  can  only  be  solved  by  every  colony 
for  itself.  At  Witzwyl  it  is  solved  by  selling 
produce  not  in  the  neighbourhood  but  by 
contract  with  distant  hotels,  and  by  growing 
beetroots,  which  competes  with  French  and  not 
with  Swiss  farmers  who  do  not  grow  them. 
In  America  the  same  thing  could  be  accom- 
plished either  by  selling  in  large  or  distant 
markets,  or  growing  produce  not  grown  in  the 
neighbourhood. 

Applying  the  foregoing  to  concrete  cases: 
it  would  be  unfair  to  establish  a  large  labour 
colony  engaged  in  truck  farming  close  to  a 
small  market  such  as  that  of  Paterson,  New 
Jersey,  for  a  large  institutional  truck  farm 


46      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

close  to  so  small  a  market  would  prejudice 
the  small  gardeners  around  it;  but  it  could 
injure  no  one  to  establish  such  a  colony  near 
New  York,  for  the  market  of  New  York  is 
large  enough  to  take  the  produce  of  such 
a  colony  without  materially  affecting  any  of 
the  other  truck  farms  in  the  neighbourhood. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  it  were  necessary  to 
establish  such  a  colony  near  so  small  a  market 
as  that  of  Paterson,  the  sale  of  its  products 
could  be  made  in  New  York  and  not  in  Pater- 
son, and  thus  avoid  sensible  competition  with 
the  free  labour  round  Paterson. 

The  products  of  factories  will  not  be  al- 
lowed to  compete  injuriously  with  free  labour, 
for  they  will  be  applied  to  the  needs  of  State 
institutions  only  and  will  not  go  into  the 
market  at  all.  By  subordinating  factories 
to  agriculture  there  will  be  no  fear  that  fac- 
tory products  will  be  made  in  such  abun- 
dance as  to  transcend  the  needs  of  State 
institutions. 

3.  The  system  of  small  agricultural  colo- 
nies, as,  for  example,  one  for  every  county, 
would  allow  the  specialisation  of  certain  in- 
dustries in  certain  colonies  and  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  inmates  in  such  a  manner  as  to 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  47 

< 

give  to  every  inmate  the  work  for  which  he 
was  best  fitted.  Thus,  instead  of  having  many 
cotton  mills  in  different  colonies,  it  would  be 
preferable  to  have  only  one  cotton  mill  to 
which  all  cotton  operatives  could  be  directed ; 
the  same  for  shoemaking,  clockwork,  etc. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  a  man  accus- 
tomed to  such  delicate  work  as  clock-  or  watch- 
making is  rendered  incapable  of  such  work 
if  he  loses  the  delicacy  of  his  fingering  by 
being  put  to  heavy  agricultural  labour.  Con- 
sequently, in  order  to  derive  the  greatest 
advantage  possible  from  the  work  of  the 
inmates,  it  is  wise  to  give  to  each  the 
work  to  which  he  has  been  accustomed. 
Therefore  instead  of  building  industrial 
towns  such  as  the  one  at  Merxplas,  it  would 
be  preferable  to  institute  a  series  of  small 
agricultural  colonies,  each  one  of  which 
would  have  an  industry  peculiar  to  itself. 
It  would  not  do,  however,  to  carry  out 
this  system  too  rigorously,  for  in  certain 
cases  it  would  be  indispensable  to  have  more 
than  one  industry  in  the  same  colony.  But 
this  would  not  prevent  such  a  specialisation  of 
certain  industries  in  certain  colonies  as  would 
best  secure  the  most  profitable  results. 


48     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

Generally  speaking,  therefore,  the  following 
conclusions  may  be  arrived  at: 

i .  It  is  preferable  to  create  several  small  ag- 
ricultural colonies  rather  than  a  few  large  ones. 

2.  It  is  advisable  to  specialise  industries 
in  the  colonies  best  fitted  therefor. 

3.  A  free  colony  ought  to  be  instituted 
by  the  side  of  every  forced  colony,  in  order 
to  facilitate  the  transfer  of  the  inmates  from 
one  colony  to  the  other.  This  plan  would 
permit  the  magistrate  to  commit  every 
case  of  vagrancy  that  came  before  him  to  a 
labour  colony.  It  would  relieve  him  of  the 
necessity  of  determining  whether  the  case  be 
one  to  which  blame  should  be  attached  or  not 
— a  thing  which,  in  view  of  the  deficiency  of 
evidence  before  him,  it  is  impossible  for  him  to 
do,  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  it  would  permit 
of  a  proper  classification  within  the  colonies 
after  all  the  information  had  been  secured 
that  would  ensure  such  classification  being 
correct  and  just. 

4.  A  sufficiently  large  amount  of  land 
ought  to  be  secured  at  once  to  enable  the  slow 
growth  round  the  central  colony  of  sub- 
colonies,  which  will  gradually  prepare  the 
inmates  for  normal  social  conditions. 


Swiss  Labour  Colonies  49 

5.  No  permanent  building  should  be  con- 
structed in  advance.  The  system  ought  to 
come  in  operation  early  in  the  spring  so  as  to 
enable  the  inmates  to  occupy  temporary 
cabins  and  build  their  own  buildings. 

6.  Every  colony  ought  to  have  at  its 
head  a  skilled  farmer. 

7 .  Sur veillants  ought  to  work  together  with 
the  inmates. 

To  these  general  principles  it  may  be  well 
to  add  one  or  two  supplementary  observations. 

There  does  not  seem  to  be  at  Witzwyl  the 
system  of  reward  which  is  such  an  excellent 
feature  of  the  colony  at  Merxplas,  and  there 
seems  no  reason  why  this  excellent  provision 
should  not  be  borrowed  from  the  Belgian 
Institution.  Moreover,  it  ought  to  be  pos- 
sible to  give  the  inmates  of  every  colony  a 
direct  interest  in  its  prosperity  by  creating 
separate  tables  to  which  a  different  dietary 
would  be  applied,  the  best  furnished  tables 
being  offered  as  a  reward  for  the  best  work. 
Such  a  system  would  give  to  every  inmate  a 
direct  interest  in  the  growth  of  vegetables, 
fruit,  and  all  such  things  as  give  variety  to 
food. 

Again,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  unfortu- 


50     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

nate  aged  should  any  longer  be  sequestrated 
as  they  now  are  in  asylums,  when  they  can 
just  as  well  form  a  part  of  free  colonies  where 
they  will  have  the  benefit  of  social  life  and 
can  still  render  considerable  service. 


*v 


/" 


CHAPTER  V 

APPLICATION     OF     THE     CONTINENTAL     SYSTEM 
OF   LABOUR    COLONIES    TO    AMERICA 

WAGABONDAGE  in  the  United  States 
*  differs  from  vagabondage  in  Europe  in 
one  important  point:  a  large  per  cent,  of 
our  tramps  are  boys;  and  they  are  not  driven  ^ 
to  tramping  by  unemployment  or  mental  dis- 
order, but  seduced  into  it  by  the  facility  with 
which  they  can  get  free  rides  on  trains  and 
food  and  lodging  from  police  and  municipal 
lodging  houses,  wayfarers'  lodges,  Salvation 
Army  institutions,  relief  societies,  and  Church 
missions.  In  other  words,  it  is  the  very  ma- 
chinery created  by  charity  to  relieve  distress 
that  becomes  an  instrument  for  promoting  it. 
The  habit  of  "  train  flipping  " — that  is  to  say, 
stealing  a  ride  for  a  few  blocks  and  dropping 
off,  as  boys  steal  rides  on  the  back  of  a  waggon, 
for  pure  fun,  is  the  beginning  of  it.  Once  on  a 
train  the  ride  lengthens  until  the  boy  conceives 
the  idea  of  seeing  something  of  the  world ;  he 

51 


52      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

is  indeed  sometimes  carried  farther  than  he 
intends;  he  travels  all  night;  next  morning 
he  is  confronted  with  the  problem  of  break- 
fast; if  he  gets  it  easily,  he  is  encouraged  to 
go  farther;  if  he  cannot  get  it  easily,  he  is  re- 
duced to  the  alternative  of  either  begging  or 
stealing;  once  he  begs  or  steals  successfully,  he 
has  developed  the  embryo  of  the  tramp  or  the 
criminal;  if  his  efforts  fail,  he  is  committed  to 
jail  and  either  loses  his  self-respect  or  if  it  is 
not  lost,  it  prevents  his  returning  home. 

It  must  not  be  imagined,  however,  that  all 
these  boys  remain  tramps  all  their  lives. 
Doctor  Reitman  estimates  that  at  least  fifty 
per  cent,  of  them  get  tired  of  the  life  and 
either  return  home  or  settle  down  to  some 
regular  occupation.  Obviously  therefore  these 
boys  can  most  of  them  be  reformed  if  the 
reformatory  influence  is  promptly,  properly, 
and  above  all  humanely  exercised. 

The  railroads  are  heavy  losers  by  this  ju- 
venile spirit  of  adventure  and  are  anxious  to 
have  it  stopped,  but  they  find  two  difficulties 
in  their  way : 

First,  these  youths  are  for  the  most  part 
innocent  of  intentional  wrong-doing;  the  train- 
men are  good-natured  and  fail  to  comply  with 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    53 

orders  to  prevent  stealing  rides  on  freight 
cars,  because  they  see  no  harm  in  it. 

Secondly,  the  law  against  vagabondage  is 
nowhere  enforced,  for  much  the  same  reason: 
magistrates  too  are  good-natured  and  are 
unwilling  to  commit  a  boy  for  no  greater  crime 
than  wandering  in  search  of  adventure.  Ob- 
viously therefore  some  form  of  coercion  must 
be  devised  by  which  the  boy  tramp  will  be 
restored  to  his  home  without  the  disgrace 
attending  committal  to  jail  or  even  to  a  forced 
colony.  The  free  colony  as  instituted  in 
Switzerland  does  not  supply  our  need,  for  there 
is  not  in  the  free  colony  the  coercion  necessary 
to  prevent  the  boys  leaving  the  colony  as  soon 
as  their  immediate  wants  are  satisfied. 

This  boy-tramp  problem  is  complicated  by 
the  fact  that  he  is  often  driven  by  need  to 
steal;  and  becomes  what  the  English  call  a 
juvenile  depredator. 

In  England  and  in  most  of  our  States, 
youths  under  the  age  of  sixteen,  who  have 
committed  misdemeanours  are  provided  for 
in  industrial  schools  and  reformatories,  but 
over  the  age  of  sixteen  they  are  imprisoned 
for  begging  and  sleeping  out,  although  it  is 
probable  that  in  many  cases  the  act  of  begging 


54      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

and  sleeping  out  is  one  for  which  the  delin- 
quent is  entirely  blameless.  This  system  was 
condemned  as  long  ago  as  1836  in  a  special 
report  on  the  juvenile  depredator,  issued  by 
the  Commission  of  Prisons  in  that  year.1 
The  increase  in  these  convictions  of  late  years 
in  Great  Britain  is  alarming.  In  1900  the 
total  convictions  of  juvenile  adults  in  England 
and  Wales  was  742;  in  1901,  863;  in  1902, 
1,016;  in  1903,  1,147;  in  1904,  1,390, — over 
thirty-five  per  cent,  of  the  prisoners  serving 
sentences  of  three  months  and  upwards.  On 
May  10,  1906,  at  Pentonville,  thirty-five  per 
cent,  of  the  inmates  were  under  twenty-one 
when  their  first  offence  was  committed ;  at  Dur- 
ham forty-one,  Birmingham  fifty-seven,  Liver- 
pool forty-seven,  Manchester  forty-five  per 
cent.  The  Commissioners  of  Prisons  in  1895 
reported  over  16,000  lads  under  twenty-one  as 
having  passed  through  British  prisons  in  the 
previous  year.  It  is  true  that  the  so-called 
Borstal  system  has  been  applied  to  all  cases 
of  over  twelve  months'  imprisonment,  so  far 
with  excellent  results.  The  Borstal  system 
is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  forced  labour 
colony  system,  except  that  it  is  conducted  in 

»  "The  Making  of  the  Criminal,'!  by  Russell  and  Rigby. 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    55 

a  prison  and  through  industrial  work  instead 
of  being  conducted  in  a  farm  colony  through 
agricultural  work.  The  system  began  in  1 902 . 
Out  of  76  lads  who  passed  into  the  care  of  the 
Association  in  the  year  ending  May  31,  1905, 
a  wholly  satisfactory  account  was  given  of 
thirty-six.  Of  eighty-one  dealt  with  in  the 
following  ten  months,  forty,  at  the  time  of  the 
issue  of  the  Report,  "were  known  to  be  at 
work,  mostly  good  work;  nine  had  gone  home 
to  work  in  the  provinces;  six  were  on  hand; 
six  had  disappeared;  four  were  given  up  as 
they  would  not  co-operate  with  the  Society, 
and  sixteen  had  been  re-convicted.' ' 

Without  entering  at  the  present  time  par- 
ticularly into  the  Borstal  system,  it  suffices 
to  say  that  the  discipline  is  probably  too 
severe  and  expensive,  although  the  fact  that 
rewards  have  been  largely  substituted  for 
punishment  has  demonstrated  the  advantage 
of  this  plan.  Obviously  what  has  been  done 
in  the  prisons  by  the  Borstal  system  can  be 
done  better  and  cheaper  in  the  labour  colo- 
nies by  the  methods  hereafter  to  be  discussed. 

Now  the  problem  how  to  deal  with  the 
tramp  so  as  neither  to  humiliate  him  by  com- 
mittal to  a  forced  colony,  nor  to  leave  him 


56      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

free  to  leave  the  free  colony  whenever  he 
wants,  is  not  confined  to  boys:  many  innocent 
unemployed  have  wandered  on  the  highway 
x  .  long  enough  to  have  acquired  the  tramp  habit, 
which  must  be  exorcised  before  they  can  be 
safely  returned  to  the  competitive  mill.  The 
\  same  is  true  of  those  who  because  they  have 
,  (been  reduced  to  taking  casual  jobs  have  lost 
the  habit  of  regular  work,  and  regular  work 
must  in  a  measure  be  imposed  upon  them 
until  they  have  lost  the  desultory  disposition 
that  makes  them  willing  to  work  for  two 
hours  but  not  for  eight.  Neither  of  these 
types  is  undeserving;  neither  of  them  should 
be  submitted  to  the  disgrace  of  committal, 
and  yet  both  are  undoubtedly  in  need  of  more 
than  mere  moral  suasion. 

Finally,  it  is  indispensable  if  the  tramp 
problem  is  to  be  dealt  with  effectually,  that  we 
should  have  a  system  by  means  of  which  it 
will  be  easy  to  distinguish  the  unemployed — 
that  is  to  say,  the  man  dismissed  from  employ- 
ment for  purely  industrial  reasons — from  the 
unemployable — that  is  to  say,  the  man  un- 
fitted for  employment  through  boyishness, 
bad  habits  or  temperamental  defect.  But 
before  proposing  such  a  system,  it  is  well  to 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    57 

explain  how  the  Swiss  labour  colony  plan 
should  be  modified  to  meet  the  exigencies  of 
American  conditions. 

§  1.  Proposed  modification  of  the  Swiss 
labour  colony  plan. 

At  the  present  time,  a  magistrate  in  Swit- 
zerland seems  to  have  no  alternative  beyond 
committing  a  vagrant  to  a  forced  colony,  or  if 
he  seems  innocent,  offering  to  him  the  hospit- 
ality of  a  free  colony.  As  has  been  explained 
above,  neither  a  committal  to  a  forced 
colony  nor  an  invitation  to  a  free  colony 
seems  applicable  to  the  boy  tramp;  the  one 
puts  upon  him  an  unnecessary  disgrace,  and 
the  other  does  not  submit  him  to  a  necessary 
coercion. 

The  suggestion  will  naturally  occur  to  us 
that  in  a  free  labour  colony,  coercion  properly 
so-called  cannot  be  exercised,  and  yet  this 
is  not  altogether  true.  A  leaf  may  be 
taken  from  the  experience  of  the  sani- 
tariums which  are  now  dotted  all  over  the 
world,  to  which  nervously  disordered  pa- 
tients are  sent,  who  are  not  sufficiently 
disordered  to  be  confined  to  a  lunatic 
asylum,  nor  yet  sufficiently  sane  to  be  free 


58      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 


0 


of  their  actions.  In  other  words  there  are 
many  patients  who  in  their  nervous  dis- 
orders correspond  closely  to  the  boy  tramp. 
They  need  treatment,  and  yet  they  are  not 
always  sufficiently  aware  of  their  disorder 
to  be  willing  to  undergo  a  treatment  of 
sufficient  length  to  effect  a  cure.  Sanitariums, 
such  as,  for  example,  that  of  Doctor  Sollier  at 
Boulogne,  are  so  contrived  that  the  inmate 
once  persuaded  to  enter  the  establishment 
finds  it  extremely  difficult  to  leave  it.  If  he 
grows  restive  and  wants  to  leave,  he  is  per- 
suaded to  remain  until  consultation  can  be 
had  with  his  physician.  If  he  makes  an 
effort  to  leave  without  the  consent  of  the  at- 
tendants, he  finds  obstacles  in  the  shape  of 
closed  doors,  and  yet  doors  not  so  closed  as  to 
constitute  a  prison,  but  rather  doors  closed  as 
is  usual  in  large  European  country  places — 
that  is  to  say,  the  entrance  gate  is  locked  and 
kept  locked,  and  only  opened  by  a  janitor  se- 
lected for  his  discretion  and  tact.  By  this 
method  patients  are  often  retained  long 
enough  to  effect  a  cure,  though  they  regularly 
and  sometimes  impatiently  demand  to  be 
allowed  to  return  home. 

This  method  cannot  be  exactly  followed 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    59 

in  a  free  labour  colony,  but  the  following  de- 
vice is  suggested  as  comparable  with  it  and 
even  still  more  effectual. 

It  is  suggested  that  a  law  to  be  passed  for 
the  purpose  of  dealing  with  this  question 
shall  leave  the  magistrate  free  either  to  com- 
mit to  a  forced  labour  colony  or  to  suggest  to 
the  vagrant  that  he  sign  a  two  months'  con- 
tract with  a  free  colony. 

Should  the  vagrant  decline  to  sign  a  two 
months'  contract,  there  will  then  be  no  alter- 
native but  to  commit  him  to  a  forced  labour 
colony.  It  is  probable  that  when  such  a  law 
first  comes  into  operation,  committals  to  the 
forced  labour  colony  will  outnumber  com- 
mittals to  the  free  because  vagrants  will  de- 
cline to  sign  a  two  months'  contract;  but  it 
can  reasonably  be  expected  that,  when  the  law 
has  been  in  operation  for  a  few  months,  vag- 
rants will  get  to  understand  the  great  differ- 
ence that  exists  between  a  free  and  a  forced 
labour  colony,  and,  whenever  the  option  is 
given  to  them,  will  sign  a  two  months'  con- 
tract. When  the  vagrant  is  clearly  blame- 
less, a  two  months'  contract  with  a  free 
labour  colony  is  clearly  the  best  solution,  but 
when  the  magistrate  has  reason  to  doubt  the 


60     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

entire  innocence  of  the  vagrant,  he  ought  to 
have  the  right — it  ought  to  be  his  duty — to 
commit  him  to  the  free  labour  colony  "under 
surveillance/'  Now,  committal  under  sur- 
veillance will  put  the  vagrant  in  the  free 
colonies  under  very  much  the  same  conditions 
as  the  patient  in  a  sanitarium.  The  entrance 
gate  will  be  kept  closed;  the  janitor  will  be 
instructed  not  to  open  the  gates  to  inmates  for 
egress  without  a  written  permit  from  the  Di- 
rector. An  inmate  under  surveillance  will 
not  be  given  work  in  unguarded  quarters, 
but  will,  on  the  contrary,  be  given  work  either 
in  a  closed  factory  or  in  a  closed  vegetable 
garden. 

Further,  every  inmate  will  be  given,  upon 
entering  the  establishment,  a  suit  of  clothes. 
These  clothes  will  have  nothing  sufficiently 
distinctive  to  attract  attention.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  will  consist  of  such  overalls  as  are 
usually  used  by  farm  labourers;  but  there 
will  be  interwoven  in  the  stuff  a  thread,  too 
inconspicuous  to  be  visible  except  upon  close 
inspection,  but  sufficiently  clear  to  distin- 
guish them  from  those  worn  by  farm  labour- 
ers. This  is  resorted  to  at  Witzwyl  where 
the  clothes  of  the  inmates  are  those  habitually 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    61 

used  by  Swiss  guides — a  sort  of  brown  wool- 
len material  in  which  a  white  thread  is  woven 
in  the  manner  suggested.  It  is  quite  im- 
possible to  perceive  it  except  upon  close 
inspection. 

Now  the  object  of  furnishing  the  inmates 
with  such  a  suit  of  clothes  is  twofold:  In 
the  first  place,  it  permits  of  the  clothes  of  the 
inmates  being  cleaned  and  disinfected — some- 
times a  very  necessary  precaution;  in  the 
second  place,  it  converts  the  inmate  who 
leaves  the  institution  without  the  consent  of 
the  Director  or  the  authorities,  into  a  misde- 
meanant, for  by  so  doing  he  has  been  guilty  of 
petty  larceny:  he  has  stolen  a  suit  of  clothes. 
This  is  brought  home  to  him  when  he  is  given 
the  garments  by  a  simple  reminder  that  the 
garments  are  the  property  of  the  institution, 
not  his  own,  and  an  explanation  that  his  own 
clothes  will  be  restored  to  him  upon  his  with- 
drawal from  the  same.  No  disgrace  will  at- 
tach to  the  wearing  of  these  clothes,  because 
the  white  thread  in  them  is  not  sufficiently 
conspicuous  to  attract  attention  in  the  first 
place  and  in  the  second  place  because  they  are 
worn  by  all  the  members  of  the  free  colonies, 
whether  under  surveillance  or  not. 


62      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

§  2.  What  will  be  the  general  aspect  of  a 
proposed  labour  colony? 

It  will  be  divided  as  at  Witzwyl  into  two 
totally  different  institutions,  the  inmates  of 
which  will  be  kept  strictly  apart:  at  Witzwyl 
the  forced  labour  colony  is  on  the  left  and  the 
free  labour  colony  on  the  right.  Every  inmate 
of  the  forced  labour  colony  will  have  his  cell, 
well-lit  and  comfortable,  but  in  which  he  will  be 
enclosed  every  night.  He  will  be  encouraged 
to  make  his  cell  attractive  and  wil  be  fur- 
nished with  books  from  the  library  and  such 
periodical  literature  as  is  fit  for  him  to  read. 
In  the  day  time  he  will  work  in  the  open  fields, 
attended  by  wardens  who  will  work  with 
him  and  thus  serve  the  useful  purpose  of  not 
only  directing  the  work  but  sharing  in  it,  in- 
fluencing the  conversation,  and  acquiring 
the  confidence  that  can  only  be  secured 
by  companionship. 

On  the  right  will  be  the  free  labour  colony 
where  all  the  inmates,  save  those  under  sur- 
veillance, will  be  under  no  restraint  what- 
ever except  that  of  their  contract  and  the 
wearing  of  a  suit  of  clothes  that  belongs 
to  the  institution  and  not  to  themselves. 
They  will  work  in  the  open  fields  without  the 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    63 

attendance  of  wardens  except  the  very  few 
that  will  be  necessary  to  direct  their  work. 
Midway,  however,  between  the  fields  and 
factories  in  which  the  forced  labour  colonists 
will  be  working  always  under  the  eye  and  in 
co-operation  with  wardens,  and  the  fields  and 
factories  in  which,  on  the  contrary,  the  free 
labour  colonists  will  be  working  without  the 
attendance  of  wardens  save  those  who 
direct  their  work,  there  will  be  a  compara- 
tively smaller  area  in  which  colonists  under 
surveillance  will  be  put  to  work,  either  in 
factories  or  in  closed  vegetable  gardens,  with 
just  enough  wardens  to  keep  them  under  sur- 
veillance and  yet  not  enough  to  give  them  a 
sense  of  the  surveillance. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  consider  how 
the  task  of  the  magistrate  will  be  simpli- 
fied by  such  a  system  of  labour  colonies,  but 
before  examining  this,  it  is  indispensable  to 
point  out  the  necessity  of  separating  the 
unemployed — that  is  to  say  the  man  who 
has  lost  employment  for  purely  industrial 
reasons  and  is  anxious  to  find  employment 
— from  the  unemployable  that  is  to  say  the 
man  who   is    without   employment  through 


64      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

boyishness,    bad    habits,  or    temperamental 
defect. 

§  3-  Separation  of  the  unemployed  from 
the  unemployable. 

The  English  Departmental  Committee's  re- 
port is  in  favour  of  the  adoption  in  England 
of  some  such  plan  as  exists  in  Germany  or 
Switzerland  to  this  end.  It  has  already  been 
pointed  out  that  the  system  which  exists  in 
Europe  is  by  no  means  a  satisfactory  one :  the 
unemployed  is  called  upon  to  produce  too 
much  in  the  way  of  papers.  It  is  repugnant 
to  our  American  sense  of  individual  liberty 
that  workers  should  be  treated  as  a  special 
class  and  called  upon  to  produce  documents 
which  not  only  may  be  used  for  preventing 
them  from  getting  employment,  as  the  livret 
was,  but  are  of  a  nature  to  diminish  their  self- 
respect.  All  that  it  seems  necessary  to  exact 
from  the  unemployed  is  a  statement  from  his 
last  employer  as  to  the  time  when  he  entered 
his  employment  and  the  time  when  he  left  it. 
The  French  law  obliges  the  employer  to  fur- 
nish this  statement  to  a  discharged  employee, 
and  it  suffices  for  all  practical  purposes. 
Whatever  be  the  authorities  before  whom  an 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    65 

unemployed  presents  himself,  such  a  certificate 
furnishes  the  information  necessary  to  deter- 
mine his  past  history,  for  a  working  man  is 
expected  to  keep  in  his  possession  certi- 
ficates from  employers  extending  over  a 
given  time,  for  example,  over  at  least  two 
or  three  years,  so  that  in  case  he  has 
changed  employment  his  character  during 
that  period  can  be  investigated.  If  he  fails  to 
give  certificates  extending  over  this  time,  or 
information  regarding  his  employment  during 
this  time,  his  case  is  evidently  one  requir- 
ing investigation,  and  he  should  be  taken 
before  a  magistrate  and  put  into  a  free  labour 
colony  under  surveillance.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  furnishes  such  certificates,  he  is  prima 
facie  entitled  to  all  the  help  the  community 
can  give  him  to  find  new  employment.  He* 
ought  therefore  to  be  housed  and  fed 
in  whatever  municipal  lodging  houses,  or 
other  accommodation  the  nearest  town  can 
afford  for  the  purpose  of  supporting  him  on 
his  way  from  one  employment  to  another. 
If,  however,  he  has  been  travelling  for  some 
time  without  finding  employment  and  it  be- 
comes clear  that  either  because  of  exceptional 

industrial    conditions    or    because    of    some 

5 


66      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 


Y 
2^ 


-* 


incapacity  he  is  not  likely  to  find  employ- 
ment, he  ought  either  to  be  induced  to 
sign  a  two  months'  contract  with  a  free 
labour  colony  or  be  taken  before  a  magistrate 
who  will  then  exercise  the  discretion  above 
explained. 

Obviously  it  is  to  the  interest  of  society 
that  an  able-bodied  man  should  find  employ- 
ment at  the  earliest  moment  possible.  He 
ought  therefore  to  be  encouraged  to  this 
effect,  and  every  town  ought  to  furnish  him 
free  lodging  and  food  until  such  employment 
is  found.  It  would  seem  advisable  to  divorce 
this  lodging  house  in  which  the  unemployed 
are  housed  from  the  police,  for  it  is  difficult 
for  the  police  who  are  daily  dealing  with  crime 
to  give  to  such  unemployed  the  consider- 
ation to  which  they  are  entitled.  It  would 
be  expedient,  if  possible,  to  divorce  them 
also  from  the  Department  of  Charity,  for 
a  self-respecting  workman  ought  to  be  pro- 
vided by  the  State  with  the  means  of 
obtaining  employment  as  a  right  and  not 
as  a  charity.  These  stations  ought  there- 
fore to  be  under  the  Department  of  Labour 
and  not  under  that  either  of  Charity  or 
Correction. 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    67 

§  4.     Functions  of  a  magistrate    under   the 
labour  colony  plan. 

The  labour  colony  plan  will  under  these 
conditions  for  the  first  time  put  the  magis- 
trate in  a  position  where  he  can  render  in- 
telligent and  useful  service.  It  cannot  be  too 
often  repeated  that  the  task  imposed  upon 
a  magistrate  to-day  is  an  impossible  one  in 
view  of  the  inability  of  the  magistrate  to 
distinguish  between  the  numerous  kinds  of 
vagrants  that  come  before  him,  presenting  a 
similar  aspect  to  the  eye,  though  undoubtedly 
characterised  by  profound  differences  not 
immediately  discernible.  As  has  been  already 
stated,  in  view  of  this  difficulty,  magistrates\ 
have  got  into  the  habit  of  committing  vagrants 
to  the  workhouse  for  short  terms  which  are 
useless  because  ineffectual  whether  for  relief 
or  for  reformation.  The  task  of  the  magis- 
trate becomes  simple  under  the  labour  colony 
plan.  In  the  first  place  the  genuine  unem- 
ployed does  not  come  before  him  at  all,  unless 
a  long  failure  to  obtain  employment  has  re- 
duced him  to  the  condition  of  the  unemploy- 
able. When  an  unemployable  comes  before 
a  magistrate,  he  has  only  three  questions  to 
put  himself:     Is  he  obviously  blameless?     If 


68      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

so  he  is  to  be  recommended  to  sign  a  two 
months'  contract  with  a  free  labour  colony. 
If  he  declines  to  sign  he  must  be  committed 
to  the  forced  labour  colony.  If  he  is 
obviously  not  blameless,  that  is  to  say  if  he 
has  been  guilty  of  larceny,  or  if  he  has 
been  brought  up  for  a  second  or  third  time 
for  disorderly  conduct,  he  must  be  committed 
to  a  forced  colony.  If  there  is  doubt  as  to 
whether  he  is  blameless  or  not, — if  for  example 
he  is  brought  before  a  magistrate  only  for  the 
first  time  for  disorderly  conduct,  or  if  without 
any  charge  of  disorderly  conduct,  his  condi- 
tion seems  to  indicate  doubt  as  to  whether  a 
free  colony  will  furnish  him  with  the  discipline 
he  needs,  then  he  should  be  invited  to  sign  a 
contract  with  a  free  labour  colony  and  the  free 
labour  colony  should  be  requested  to  hold  him 
under  surveillance. 

§  5.  Treatment  of  the  inmates  in  the  forced 
and  free  labour  colonies. 

It  is  indispensable  that  the  labour  colony 
be  distinguished  to  the  utmost  possible  from 
either  the  penitentiary  on  the  one  hand  or  the 
workhouse  on  the  other.  It  is  true  that  the 
forced  labour  colony  partakes  of  the  peni- 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    69 

tentiary  and  the  free  labour  colony  of  the 
workhouse,  and  yet  until  the  apparent  simi- 
larity between  these  respective  institutions  is 
obliterated  by  a  total  change  in  the  whole 
attitude  of  the  management  to  the  pauper, 
false  notions  will  continue  to  prevail  upon 
this  subject.  Candidates  for  labour  colonies 
are  unhappy  people,  and  the  effort  of  a  labour 
colony  ought  to  be  to  render  them  less  un- 
happy, to  improve  their  bodies,  and  by  im- 
proving their  bodies  fit  them  for  the  enjoyment 
of  life.  Such  discipline  as  is  indispensable  in 
these  colonies  should  not  be  more  strict  nor 
otherwise  regarded  than  the  discipline  of  the 
hospital;  the  occasional  use  of  the  correction 
cell  should  represent  in  the  labour  colony  what 
surgery  represents  in  the  hospital.  No  well 
man  wants  to  go  to  a  hospital;  no  more  will 
any  man  fit  for  the  competition  of  life  want 
to  subject  himself  to  the  discipline  of  a  labour 
colony;  men  unfit  for  the  competition  of  life 
are  a  danger  to  the  community  and  to  them- 
selves; they  should,  in  their  own  interests  as 
well  as  those  of  the  community,  be  put  where 
without  expense  to  the  community  they  can  be 
rendered  fit.  The  whole  object  of  the  la- 1 
bour    colony    is    to    make    the  unfortunate  \ 


70     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

\less  unfortunate  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  re- 
lieve the  community  of  the  consequences  of 
their  misfortune  on  the  other.  It  would  be  as 
insane  to  oppose  the  right  of  the  community 
to  isolate  small-pox  patients  from  the  com- 
munity on  the  ground  of  the  rights  of  indi- 
vidual liberty  as  to  refuse  to  isolate  paupers 
and  vagrants  who  constitute  a  source  of 
infection  wherever  they  are  tolerated.  Hab- 
itual vagrants  are  of  course  likely  to  be  as 
fretful  under  the  discipline  of  a  labour  colony 
as  many  patients  are  under  the  discipline  of 
a  trained  nurse.  Their  best  welfare,  how- 
ever, and  the  welfare  of  the  community  de- 
mand that  they  should  be  treated.  Of  this 
there  can  no  longer  be  any  possible  doubt.  For 
hundreds  of  years  civilisation  has  been  at- 
tempting to  treat  vagrancy  by  so-called  deter- 
rents and  failed.  This  is  the  unanimous 
conclusion  of  all  those  who  have  studied  the 

I  subject.  Wherever,  on  the  contrary,  re- 
compense has  been  substituted  for  punish- 
ment, the  result  has  justified  the  substitution. 
This  principle  is  now  universally  recognised 
by  trainers  of  wild  animals,  who  accomplish 
their  best  results  by  rewards,  and  use  punish- 
ment only  in  extreme  and  exceptional  cases. 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    71 

If  the  free  labour  colony  can  be  given  the 
atmosphere  of  the  home,  such  as  prevails  at 
Luhlerheim,  there  will  be  little  desire  to  escape 
from  it  until  the  inmate  is  fit  for  restoration  to 
normal  social  conditions;  but  should  any  in- 
dividual unfit  for  such  conditions  desire  to 
abandon  the  free  colony,  he  can  easily  be 
induced  to  remain  there  by  the  fact  that 
liberty  should  be  given  to  the  director  to 
bring  his  case  before  the  magistrate,  with  the 
alternative  of  committal  to  a  forced  labour 
colony  should  the  magistrate  decide  that  the 
director  is  right  in  refusing  consent  to  with- 
drawal from  the  institution.  Under  these 
conditions  there  should  be  no  objection  to 
the  indeterminate  sentence  as  regards  these 
colonies.  Indeed  the  words  "sentence"  and 
" committal' '  should  be  carefully  avoided  in 
this  connection,  and  some  other  words 
found  to  indicate  that  a  particular  free  colony 
is  selected  as  the  home  to  which  the  inmate  is 
to  be  directed.  Once  in  the  home,  the  ma- 
jority of  the  inmates  would  not  desire  to 
leave  it  until  they  were  fit  to  leave  it, 
and  upon  the  few  who  may  desire  to  leave 
it  before  they  are  fit,  a  gentle  pressure 
could    be    exercised    through    the    right   of 


72      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

the  director  to  bring  the  case  before  the 
magistrate. 

One  of  the  great  advantages  of  the  labour 
colony  system  is  that  it  furnishes  an  oppor- 
tunity to  the  director  to  watch  the  progress  of 
every  inmate  and  slowly  prepare  him  for  re- 
storation to  social  life.  But  obviously  this 
matter  should  not  be  left  to  the  director 
alone.  He  should  be  subjected  to  two  checks : 
in  the  first  place,  any  inmate,  after  the  ex- 
piration of  his  minimum  term,  ought  to  be  at 
liberty  to  bring  his  case  before  the  court  under 
Habeas  Corpus  proceedings;  in  the  second 
place  there  ought  to  be  attached  to  every 
labour  colony  group  a  committee,  composed 
partly  of  officials  and  partly  of  non-officials, 
whose  business  it  should  be  to  keep  informed 
regarding  every  case  in  the  colony,  to  which 
the  inmates  of  the  colony  could  occasionally 
refer,  and  which  would  have  the  power  not  only 
to  make  recommendations  to  the  director,  but 
even  to  bring  cases  before  the  court  if  they 
considered  detention  was  being  unduly 
prolonged. 

Such  a  committee  of  supervision  might  con- 
stitute an  influence  of  the  greatest  value  in 
connection  with  labour  colony  groups,  and  in 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    73 

this  context  a  word  may  be  said  as  regards 
a  suggestion  that  labour  colonies  be  en- 
trusted in  part  to  philanthropic  initiative  and 
enterprise. 

In  the  first  place,  a  distinction  can  be 
made  upon  this  point  between  forced  and  free 
labour  colonies.  The  latter  might  in  some 
measure  be  left  to  philanthropic  enterprise, 
but  it  seems  difficult  if  not  impossible  to 
clothe  philanthropists  with  the  power  of 
coercion  necessary  to  the  conduct  of  a  forced 
labour  colony.  In  the  first  place,  philan- 
thropic institutions  very  often  owe  their  origin 
and  usefulness  to  the  labours  of  one  man,  at 
whose  death  they  are  likely  to  fail  in  their 
purpose  and  to  perish  for  lack  of  funds.  In 
the  second  place,  there  is  a  lack  of  continuity 
in  the  efforts  of  many  philanthropists,  to 
which  a  matter  so  important  to  the  community 
as  a  forced  labour  colony  should  not  be  sur- 
rendered. In  the  third  place,  although  we  are 
all  familiar  with  exceptional  instances  where 
philanthropists  have  been  willing  to  do  the 
daily  drudgery  involved  in  the  management 
of  such  an  institution  as  a  labour  colony,  it 
is  a  characteristic  of  some  philanthropists 
that  they  are  more  willing  to  address  assem- 


74      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

blies  than  to  keep  books.  All  persons  who 
have  studied  the  administration  of  relief  funds 
must  be  familiar  with  the  extreme  difficulty 
of  utilising  the  fine  impulses  of  some  of  our 
fellow  citizens,  without  exposing  sound  social 
economy  to  the  inconvenience  that  attends 
purely  voluntary  service.  They  are  also  fa- 
miliar with  the  perfunctoriness  that  tends  to 
characterise  the  work  of  officials.  The  task 
with  which  we  are  confronted  is  how  to  avoid 
the  dangers  attending  official  perfunctoriness 
on  the  one  hand  and  philanthropic  caprice 
on  the  other.  This  problem  can  probably  best 
be  solved  by  putting  all  matters  of  adminis- 
tration in  the  hands  of  paid  officials,  and 
constituting  by  their  side  committees  of  sur- 
veillance composed  partly  of  philanthropists 
and  partly  of  officials,  thereby  combining  the 
humane  interest  of  philanthropists  with  the 
experience  of  official  experts.  The  presence 
of  officials  on  the  committee  will  ensure  the 
regular  action  of  such  committee,  and  the 
presence  of  philanthropists  on  the  committee 
will  tend  to  give  to  the  action  of  the  commit- 
tee the  element  of  humanity  which  officials 
tend  in  the  routine  of  their  work  to  lack. 
A  committee  of  supervision  of  this  character 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    75 

was  organised  in  Belgium,  and  its  failure  to 
act  might  be  urged  against  this  plan.  But 
the  failure  of  the  committee  of  supervision  in 
Belgium  was  due  to  obvious  reasons:  In  the 
first  place,  it  was  not  given  sufficient  power; 
in  the  second  place,  the  colony  at  Merxplas 
is  composed  of  so  many  individuals  that  any 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  committee  to  be- 
come familiar  with  the  five  to  six  thousand 
cases  there  would  have  been  vain.  The 
experience  of  Merxplas  again  furnishes  an  ad- 
ditional reason  why  the  colony  group  should 
be  small,  so  that  committees  of  surveillance 
organised  to  temper  the  action  of  the  director 
may  acquire  a  knowledge  of  every  case  in  the 
institution  to  which  they  are  attached,  and 
may  thus  be  encouraged  to  render  service 
because  their  service  can  be  effectual. 

With  the  precautions  above  mentioned, 
the  indeterminate  sentence  would  lose  all  its 
inconvenience,  for  every  inmate  would  be 
protected  by  his  right  of  individual  appeal  to 
the  courts  at  the  expiration  of  the  minimum 
term,  and  by  the  support  of  the  committee 
of  patronage  whenever  his  case  seemed  to  the 
committee  worthy  of  support. 

But  if  there  be  in  any  legislature  a  prejudice 


76      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

against  the  application  of  the  indeterminate 
sentence  to  vagrants,  it  does  not  seem  neces- 
sary to  do  more  than  commit  to  the  forced 
colony  for  a  definite  term,  such  term  to  be 
diminished  by  good  behaviour  but  subject 
to  increase  should  the  director  and  the  com- 
mittee of  supervision  be  persuaded  that 
a  release  would  only  throw  the  inmate  back 
upon  his  bad  habits  again. 

Under  such  circumstances,  as  has  been  al- 
ready suggested,  the  director  ought  to  be  at 
liberty  to  bring  the  case  before  a  magistrate 
with  a  view  to  securing  recommittal  for  a 
further  term,  the  vagrant  having  the  right 
to  counsel  designated  by  the  court,  if  not 
chosen  by  himself,  in  case  he  objects  to  such 
re-committal. 

At  Merxplas  the  minimum  term  is  two  years 
and  the  maximum  seven,  but  by  the  system  of 
diminishing  the  term  for  good  conduct  it  is 
reduced  to  an  average  of  thirteen  months. 
In  Switzerland  the  committal  to  forced  colo- 
nies is  for  a  term  of  two  years,  and  this  also  is 
subject  to  reduction  by  good  conduct.  Upon 
this  question  public  opinion  has  perhaps  still 
to  learn  the  lesson  that  punishment  does  not 
deter,  that  vagrancy  is  a  matter  of  habit, 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    77 

and  that  until  the  habit  of  vagrancy  is  re- 
placed by  the  habit  of  work,  restoration  to 
normal  life  is  unwise  not  only  for  the  in- 
dividual but  for  the  community  also. 

§  6.     Punishment. 

It  must  not  be  assumed  that  because  hu- 
mane treatment  of  tramps  is  urged  in  this 
monograph,  it  is  proposed  to  abstain  from 
punishment  altogether.  The  experience  to 
be  derived  from  the  Dutch  colonies  is  that 
the  mere  existence  of  a  dark  cell  to  which  the 
inmates  can  be  confined  is  sufficient  to  exercise 
the  necessary  discipline.  The  director  in- 
formed me  that  he  hardly  used  the  cell  more 
than  once  a  year.  In  the  forced  labour  colon- 
ies of  Switzerland  the  inmates,  owing  to  the 
existence  of  a  free  colony  alongside,  are  of  a 
lower  criminal  average  than  in  Holland,  and 
the  result  is  that  the  dark  cell  is  resorted  to 
somewhat  more  frequently,  as  has  been  al- 
ready explained  in  the  text.  The  extent  to 
which  the  cell  is  used  must  depend  upon  the 
character  of  the  inmates  and  the  temperament 
of  the  director. 

Persons  who  have  been  long  accustomed  to 
deal  with  criminals  are  generally  of  the  opinion 


78      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

that  a  more  severe  form  of  punishment  than 
the  cell  must  or  should  occasionally  be  resorted 
to ;  that  many  of  the  inmates  in  the  workhouse 
and  penitentiary  who  are  perfectly  able  to 
work  in  mind  as  well  as  in  body,  and  de- 
liberately quarter  themselves  upon  the  public 
by  committing  offences  which  will  ensure  them 
winter  quarters  in  some  State  institution, 
can  be  deterred  from  levying  this  tax  upon 
the  community  only  by  the  fear  of  corporal 
punishment.  When  the  objection  is  made 
that  corporal  punishment  occasions  more  harm 
to  the  person  who  inflicts  the  punishment 
than  it  does  good  to  those  who  receive  it,  they 
reply  that  mechanical  contrivances  could 
easily  eliminate  this  objection.  Upon  this  it 
is  not  my  intention  to  express  any  personal 
opinion;  the  question  of  punishment  is  one 
of  the  most  difficult  with  which  the  penologist 
has  to  deal.  Some  of  the  highest  authorities 
recommend  it;  others  are  bitterly  opposed 
thereto. 

Obviously  a  labour  colony  must  not  be 
'made  a  place  so  agreeable  that  it  will  con- 
stitute a  resort  for  all  who  prefer  freedom 
from  responsibility  to  the  freedom  of  com- 
petitive life.     In  Holland  every  person  who 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    79 

is  found  begging  in  the  streets  is  imprisoned 
for  at  least  two  weeks  as  a  punishment. 
Imprisonment  in  a  dark  cell  with  nothing  to 
eat  or  drink  but  bread  and  water  might  usefully 
be  resorted  to  as  a  deterrent  in  cases  where 
perfectly  able-bodied  men  show  a  disposition 
to  abuse  of  the  hospitality  of  the  labour 
colony   system. 

Nor  is  there  anything  in  the  labour  colony 
system  which  prevents  the  use  of  corporal 
punishment,  should  the  Legislature  consider 
corporal  punishment  advisable.  The  one 
thing  which  must  not  be  forgotten  regarding 
the  colony  system  is  that  it  ought  to  be  self- 
supporting  and  that  therefore  so  far  as  the 
burden  to  the  community  is  concerned,  it  is  a 
matter  of  indifference  how  many  may  resort  to 
it.  It  is  a  matter  of  importance,  however,  that 
there  should  not  be  a  wholesale  pauperisation 
of  the  working  class,  and  some  check  must  be 
found  to  a  disposition  to  abuse  of  the  labour 
colony  system ;  the  severity  of  the  'check  must 
depend  upon  the  extent  of  the  evil. 

§  7.     Size. 

As  regards  size  it  is  probable  that  no 
colony  should  accommodate  more  than  700 


8o     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

inmates,  that  is  to  say  300  in  the  forced  colony, 
300  in  the  free  colony,  and,  say,  100  under 
surveillance. 

An  exception  to  this  rule  might  have  to  be 
made  in  the  neighbourhood  of  such  a  large 
city  as  New  York,  but  even  there  it  would 
probably  be  better  to  have  several  of  these 
colonies,  say  in  Long  Island,  Richmond  County, 
and  Westchester  County,  than  to  have  them 
all  grouped  in  one  large  institution  which 
would  reproduce  the  inconveniences  of  Merx- 
plas.  The  Departmental  Committee  seems 
to  think  that  it  is  not  advisable  that  these 
colonies  be  multiplied.  It  gives  as  a  reason 
therefor  that  small  colonies  would  be  more 
costly  than  ; large.  The  experience  of  Switz- 
erland shows  on  the  contrary  that  it  is  the 
small  colonies  that  pay  their  way  and  the 
large  colonies  that  are  expensive;  but  this 
subject  has  already  been  sufficiently  insisted 
upon. 

§  8.     Cost. 

The  English  Departmental  Committee  esti- 
mated that  the  net  cost  of  food,  clothing,  and 
maintenance  in  the  colony  should  not  exceed 
one  dollar  weekly  for  each  colonist.     The  ex- 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    81 

perience  of  Switzerland  shows  that  if  properly 
managed,  colonies  ultimately  become  self- 
supporting;  but  obviously,  during  the  time  of 
construction,  the  colonies  will  constitute  an 
expense,  and  it  would  be  well  to  provide  for 
at  least  the  sum  above  mentioned.  But  here 
again  it  may  be  well  to  repeat  that  costly 
buildings  are  to  be  avoided.  We  have  to  rec- 
ognise that  in  creating  labour  colonies  for  the 
isolation  of  all  vagrants  in  America  the  present 
generation  is  undertaking  a  task  which,  though 
heavy  for  ourselves,  will  be  immensely  light- 
ened for  those  who  are  to  succeed  us ;  for,  by 
isolating  the  present  generation,  the  production 
of  new  generations  will  be  in  great  part 
checked.  It  is  probable  that  the  vagrant 
population  of  the  United  States  is  about 
500,000;  by  taking  these  vagrants  off  the 
streets  and  high-roads  the  number  of  vagrants 
so  to  be  cared  for  will  eventually  be  greatly 
diminished.  In  the  first  place,  vagrancy  will 
not  continue  to  be  propagated  by  example; 
in  the  second  place,  it  will  not  be  propagated 
by  seduction ;  and  in  the  third  place  it  will  not 
be  propagated  by  fatherhood.  When  these 
three  sources  of  propagation  are  eliminated, 
it  is  probable  that  after  the  present  generation 


82      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

of  vagrants  has  disappeared  through  death  and 
restoration  to  the  community,  their  places 
will  only  be  partially  filled  by  succeeding 
generations  in  continuously  diminishing 
proportion. 

For  this  reason  large  and  costly  buildings 
would  be  not  only  unnecessary  but  useless. 
Temporary  structures  alone  should  be  built 
just  solid  enough  to  shelter  from  cold  and 
to  last  two  or  three  generations;  for  not  many 
years  hence  if  this  system  be  put  in  operation 
effectually  we  shall  be  pulling  down  buildings 
and  not  putting  them  up. 

The  question  necessarily  suggests  itself 
here :  How  will  this  system  work  in  periods  of 
such  industrial  depression  as  the  present? 
Obviously  it  would  be  useless  to  attempt  to 
hurry  an  unemployed  worker  from  shelter 
to  shelter  when  as  to-day  there  is  no  work 
for  him  to  do  anywhere.  The  expropriation 
by  the  State,  however,  of  large  tracts  of  un- 
cleared and  undrained  land  for  the  needs  of 
labour  colonies  would  for  some  generations 
to  come  suffice  to  provide  emergency  work 
in  such  crises  as  the  one  through  which  we 
are  now  passing.  It  is  part  of  the  proposed 
plan  to  secure  at  once  large  enough  tracts  of 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    83 

land  to  serve  not  only  the  immediate  pur- 
pose of  the  labour  colonies,  but  also  later  on 
that  of  such  smaller  colonies  as  Nusshof  * 
where  inmates  fit  to  be  restored  to  social  life 
can  earn  as  substantial  wages  as  on  a  private 
farm,  and  can  put  aside  a  sufficiently  large 
sum  to  put  them  beyond  the  danger  of  falling 
back  upon  the  institution  for  lack  of  funds. 
It  would  be  bad  policy  to  set  our  first  colonists  *v..  s^ 
to  the  task  of  clearing  and  draining  till  all 
our  land  were  fit  for  cultivation;  on  the  con- 
trary they  ought  to  be  set  at  the  earliest  pos- 
sible date  to  the  task  of  producing  crops  for 
their  own  sustenance,  leaving  a  large  fringe 
of  uncleared  land  for  subsequent  colonies  of 
the  Nusshof  type. 

Again  it  will  be  important  to  maintain  such 
a  fringe  of  land  destined  for  free  cultivation 
in  order  to  remove  the  apprehension  of  sur- 
rounding farmers  as  regards  the  proximity  of 
what  they  might  consider  as  an  unwelcome 
neighbour.  If  the  unwelcome  neighbour  were 
kept  at  a  distance  from  the  free  farmer  first 
by  a  large  margin  of  uncleared  land,  and  later 
by  a  ring  of  free  though  institutional  farms, 

1  Described  on  p.  40. 


84      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

there  would  be  no  reasonable  ground  for  such 
apprehension. 

Such  a  precaution  would  render  it  easier 
and  cheaper  to  purchase  for  our  purpose  such 
land  as  the  scrub-oak  tracts  of  Long  Island. 

The  task  of  providing  food  and  shelter  for 
500,000  vagrants  looks  at  first  sight  formidable; 
but  it  is  not  as  formidable  as  it  looks,  when 
we  consider  that  it  is  to  be  spread  over  the 
whole  of  the  United  States  and  the  expense 
distributed  among  eighty  millions  of  people. 
And  no  State  need  be  deterred  from  under- 
taking its  share  of  this  task  by  the  fear  that  an 
undue  share  will  be  imposed  upon  it.  Tramps 
hate  all  institutions  and  will  abandon  every 
State  that  certainly  and  comprehensively  deals 
with  them  all.  [TFis  because  vagrancy  laws 
are  not  executed  tfiat  tramps  now  wander 
freely  through  the  country.  The  first  State 
that  provides  a  system  that  makes  it  humane 
and  just  for  the  magistrate  to  sequester  every 
vagrant  that  comes  before  him  will  promptly 
rid  its  borders  of  the  tramp  who  will  avoid 
this  State  and  proceed  to  others  where  he  can 
roam  unmolesfcejO  All  the  States  will  be  driven 
by  this  process  one  after  the  other  to  adopt 
the  labour  colony  plan;  it  is  the  last  State 


Labour  Colonies  Applied  to  America    85 

to    adopt    it  that    will    bear  the    brunt    of 
vagabondage;  not  the  first. 

§  9.  Relation  of  forced  labour  colonies  to 
penitentiaries. 

The  forced  labour  colony  at  Witzwyl  is 
practically  a  penitentiary.  It  receives  all 
persons  convicted  for  misdemeanours.  But 
by  the  side  of  the  forced  labour  colonies 
there  subsist  the  old  penitentiaries  where  a 
severe  discipline  is  maintained. 

It  seems  probable  that  the  old  peniten- 
tiaries are  still  used  only  because  they  are 
there,  and  that  ultimately  all  penitentiaries, 
and  even  State  prisons,  will  be  slowly  con- 
verted into  farm  colonies;  for  there  seems 
no  reason  why  truck  farm  work  should  not 
be  universally  resorted  to.  By  the  applica- 
tion of  intensive  culture  a  very  large  number 
of  men  can  be  put  to  work  on  a  very  small 
space *  and  thus  made  to  recover  bodily 
health,  nervous  tone,  and  laborious  habits 
with  the  least  possible  expense.  It  may 
seem  sanguine  to  hope  that  State  prisons  will 

»  Evolution  and  Effort,  Chapter  X.,  2d  ed.,  p.  168.  Fields, 
Factories,  and  Workshops, ^Chaps.  III.,  IV.,  and  V.,  by  Prince 
Kropotkin. 


86      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

ever  be  self-supporting  upon  the  farm-colony 
plan  in  view  of  the  large  number  of  surveil- 
lants  necessary  to  keep  order  there,  and  the 
necessity  of  surrounding  the  farm  with  high 
stone  walls.  But  if  it  be  remembered  that 
these  stone  walls  can  be  built  by  the  unem- 
ployed at  a  comparatively  low  cost ;  that  when 
built  they  pay  income  through  the  productive- 
ness of  fruit  grown  against  them  x  and  that 
surveillants  can  be  made  to  earn  their  salary 
by  working  as  in  Switzerland,  with  the  pris- 
oners, the  improbability  of  their  being  ulti- 
mately self-supporting  diminishes.  Hence 
the  importance  of  postponing  the  building  of 
the  proposed  penitentiary  on  Riker's  Island, 
at  a  cost  of  $4,000,000,  when  half  this  sum 
ought  to  suffice  not  only  to  solve  the  tramp 
problem,  but  to  avert  all  danger  of  congestion 
in  our  existing  penitentiaries. 

For  the  present,  therefore,  it  seems  wiser 
to  leave  the  question  how  far  the  forced 
labour  colony  can  replace  the  penitentiary 
open.  A  very  few  years  of  experience  ought 
to  answer  it. 

1  Practically  every  French  vegetable  garden  is  surrounded 
by  a  high  stone  wall  for  this  reason. 


CHAPTER  VI 

INDISCRIMINATE  ALMSGIVING,  AND  CONCLUSION 

A  T  the  risk  of  wearisome  repetition,  a  final 
'**  word  must  be  said  on  the  subject  of 
almsgiving.  The  Report  of  the  Departmental 
Committee  very  justly  points  out  that  va- 
grancy flourishes  upon  it ;  that  if  vagrants  had 
no  compassionate  neighbours,  shelters,  soup 
kitchens,  etc.,  to  depend  upon,  they  would  be 
driven  to  seek  work  in  the  absence  of  charity ; 
and  cites  with  favour  the  laws  passed  in  some 
cantons  of  Switzerland  that  make  almsgiving 
a  penal  offence. 

Such  laws  may  seem  to  old-fashioned  Chris- 
tians as  a  somewhat  distant  departure  from 
the  injunction:  "He  that  giveth  to  the  poor, 
lendeth  to  the  Lord,"  but  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  remember  that  while  such  a 
law  would,  under  present  conditions,  be  alto- 
gether wicked  in  America,  the  conditions 
that  prevail  in  Switzerland  make  it  a  logical 

87 


88      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

feature  of  the  practical  philanthropy  instituted 
there. 

The  reason  why  men  and  women  continue 
to  give  alms  indiscriminately  is  because  there 
are  many  cases  of  misery  for  which  no  ade- 
quate provision  is  made.  Some  years  ago 
relief  societies  used  to  divide  cases  into  deserv- 
ing and  undeserving,  and  this  classification, 
although  it  has  now  been  practically  aban- 
doned, still  haunts  the  public  mind.  No  one 
can  read  Mr.  Edward  T.  Devine's  book  on 
Principles  of  Relief  without  being  struck  by 
the  efforts  now  made  to  relieve  every  case  of 
distress.  There  remains,  however,  a  very 
large  number  of  cases,  which  in  spite  of  every 
effort  it  is  impossible  for  private  charity  to 
relieve;  so  that  to-day  cases  fall  into  the  classi- 
fication of  helpable  and  unhelpable,  rather 
than  into  that  of  deserving  and  undeserving. 
One  conclusion  clearly  results  from  a  reading 
of  this  book:  there  are  cases  that  no  private 
charity  can  ever  relieve.  And  to  this  conclu- 
sion must  be  added  the  consideration  that 
probably  most  of  the  unhelpable  cases,  such 
as  tramps,  never  come  before  relief  societies 
at  all.  In  other  words,  unhelpable  cases  can- 
not be  relieved  by  private  charity  because  it 


Indiscriminate  Almsgiving  89 

has  no  power  to  use  the  coercion,  however 
mild,  which  is  found  to  be  indispensable  in 
these  cases. 

Now  there  are  many  good  hearts  and  good 
heads  which  ask  the  extremely  pertinent  ques- 
tion: Are  not  unhelpable  cases  also  entitled 
to  consideration? 

In  the  first  place  it  may  be  laid  down  as  an 
indisputable  fact  that  no  perfectly  healthy  man 
or  woman  prefers  begging  to  working.  Nor- 
mal people  are  not  only  willing  to  work,  but 
even  unhappy  if  they  are  not  working.  Lazi- 
ness is  due  either  to  temperamental  defect  or 
to  wealth  that  makes  work  unnecessary,  and 
to  poverty  that  makes  it  impossible.  The 
healthy  workingmen,  tradesmen,  and  farmers 
that  constitute  about  four-fifths  of  the  popu- 
lation work  as  naturally  as  they  eat  or  sleep; 
it  is  only  when  we  move  away  from  the  whole- 
some average  man  to  the  extremely  wealthy 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  extremely  poor  on  the 
other  that  we  find  unwillingness  to  work 
developed  to  the  point  of  vice.  With  this 
vice  in  the  rich  we  are  not  at  present  con- 
cerned ;  it  is  the  effect  of  this  vice  in  converting 
poverty  into  pauperism,  vagrancy,  and  crime 
that  we  have  to  consider. 


90     The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

It  is  quite  useless  in  this  connection  to  in- 
reigh  against  existing  industrial  conditions; 
;hey  may  be  revolutionised  some  day;  but 
it  this  present   moment  they  are  producing 
>aupers,  vagrants,  and  criminals  faster  than 
we  can  relieve  or  punish  them;  and  the  insis- 
tent problem  before  us  is  how  best  to  handle 
these  unhappy  people,  not  only  in  mercy  to 
them  but  in  justice  to  ourselves.     We  have 
a  duty  to  those  who  are  worn  out   by  our 
competitive  system,  and  we  have  a  right  to 
protect   ourselves   from  the   evils   to  which 
their  existence  necessarily  gives  rise. 

The  moral  responsibility  for  this  industrial 
waste  is  nowhere  clearly  fixed.  The  symp- 
toms of  overwork  are  not  always  the  same. 
There  are  moralists  who  would  be  quite  sat- 
isfied if  exhausted  artisans  would  regularly 
and  respectably  die  in  hospitals  of  tuberculosis, 
and  other  easily  diagnosed  diseases ;  but  this 
is  not  what  happens:  some  tired  workmen,  in 
unconscious  need  of  more  concentrated  nour- 
ishment than  their  table  can  afford,  have  re- 
course to  alcohol ;  this  in  the  first  instance  may 
be  altogether  innocent ;  a  mere  accident  may 
reveal  that  a  glass  of  whiskey  will  enable  them 
to  finish  a  day's  work  without  which  they  would 


Indiscriminate  Almsgiving  91 

be  obliged  to  throw  up  the  sponge;  the  very 
eagerness  to  accomplish  their  task  in  the 
allotted  time  is  sometimes  the  inducement 
to  drink;  they  do  not  know  that  the  medi- 
cine to  which  they  have  recourse  will  end 
by  becoming  a  poison  with  which  they  can- 
not dispense,  and  through  which  a  self- 
respecting  working  man  in  the  effort, 
with  failing  strength,  to  support  his  family, 
becomes  a  drunkard  and  falls  into  the  class  of 
Unhelpable  Case. 

Others  are  thrown  by  repeated  sickness  out 
of  regular  employment;  they  are  reduced  to 
pick  up  odd  jobs  for  a  living;  they  become 
casuals;  their  leisure  is  necessarily  spent  in 
public-houses,  where  they,  like  their  richer 
brothers,  have  to  kill  time,  and  do  it  at  the 
expense  of  their  morals  and  of  their  self- 
respect;  they  become  less  and  less  fit 
for  regular  work,  and  gradually  become  con- 
verted into  vagabonds,  "incorrigible  rogues," 
and  fall  into  the  class  of  Unhelpable  Case. 

Others,  again,  express  their  exhaustion  in 
moroseness  and  even  brutality;  husband  and 
wife  scold  and  beat  one  another;  the  home  is 
rendered  insupportable  and  breaks  up;  the 
women  resort  to  the  saloon  and  worse;  the 


92      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

men  to  the  streets  and  highways.  There  are 
occasional  unhappy  marriages  in  the  upper 
class,  but  they  do  not  lead  to  vagabondage; 
wealth  makes  it  possible  for  ill-assorted  couples 
to  live  in  different  apartments  under  the  same 
roof ;  but  perpetual  quarrels  between  husband 
and  wife  in  the  presence  of  children  and  in  a 
single  room  render  life  insupportable.  The 
same  evil  which  only  produces  inconvenience 
among  the  rich  drives  the  poor  to  drink  and 
vagabondage;  and  thus,  whether  the  respon- 
sible authors  of  their  wretchedness  or  not,  they 
fall  into  the  class  of  Unhelpable  Case. 

The  above  is  not  intended  to  support  the 
theory  that  there  is  no  difference  between 
one  case  of  poverty  and  another;  on  the  con- 
trary, there  is  a  classification  which  runs 
very  nearly  parallel  with  that  of  the  Relief 
Societies  but  differs  from  it  in  some  import- 
ant particulars. 

In  the  first  place,  society  is  as  much  con- 
cerned with  unhelpable  cases  as  with  helpa- 
ble  cases;  both,  if  neglected,  result  in  injury 
to  society,  and  unhelpable  cases  much  more 
rapidly  than  helpable. 

In  the  second  place,  the  essential  difference 
between  the  cases  which  can  properly  be  re- 
lieved by  private  means  and  those  which  can 


Indiscriminate  Almsgiving  93 

be  properly  handled  only  by  the  State  is  that 
in  the  one  relief  intelligently  given  may  save 
the  case  from  pauperism,  while  in  the  other 
no  temporary  relief  is  likely  to  be  of  per- 
manent service.  Here  is  the  touchstone:  is  it 
poverty  or  pauperism?  If  mere  poverty,  if 
purely  accidental,  temporary,  and  preventable, 
then  it  is  infinitely  better  that  the  case  be 
handled  by  individual  and  friendly  relief  than 
that  it  should  be  allowed  to  swell  the  pauper 
residuum  from  which  it  can  with  greater 
difficulty  be  rescued. 

If  the  above  is  a  correct  exposition  of  the 
problem  of  pauperism,  it  would  seem  as  though 
we  should  have  to  restate  some  of  the  formulae 
which  tend  to  mislead  our  minds. 

There  are  no  undeserving  cases  of  pauper- 
ism if  by  undeserving  is  meant  undeserving  of 
consideration. 

There  are  helpable  cases  of  poverty  that  can 
by  timely  and  intelligent  relief  such  as  is  to- 
day rendered  by  the  Charity  Organization 
Society  and  the  Association  for  Improving 
the  Condition  of  the  Poor,  be  saved  from 
pauperism;  but  all  unhelpable  cases  of 
pauperism  must  be  handled  by  the  State,  not 
only  out  of  mercy  to  them  but  out  of  justice 
to  ourselves. 


94      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

It  is  only  when  the  State  handles  every  case 
of  pauperism  that  almsgiving  can  be  con- 
demned ;  for  if  a  single  case  is  left  unprovided 
for,  that  case  is  one  that  justifies  almsgiving; 
whereas  if  all  cases  are  provided  for,  alms- 
giving is  wrong  because  it  prevents  or  post- 
pones the  application  to  the  person  receiving 
alms  of  the  system  created  for  his  benefit. 

That  all  cases  of  pauperism  can  be  handled 
by  the  State  at  no  expense  beyond  that  of  in- 
stallation has  been  proved  by  the  Swiss  labour 
colonies. 

That  all  cases  of  pauperism  can  be  so 
handled  without  injustice  to  the  paupers  and 
even  without  undue  invasion  of  individual 
liberty  has  been  demonstrated  by  the  opera- 
tion of  the  double  system  of  free  and  forced 
labour  colonies. 

That  many  cases  of  pauperism  are  capable 
of  reformation  seems  indicated  by  the  Bor- 
stal experiment  in  England,  and  still  better 
through  the  sub-colony  plan  of  Witzwyl. 

And  thus  we  are  led  to  a  possible  solution 
of  the  problem  of  pauperism: 

For  those  in  search  of  employment,  way 
tickets  and  casual  wards; 

For  the  temporarily  unemployed,  in  excep- 


Indiscriminate  Almsgiving  95 

tional  periods  of  depression  temporary  relief 
work; 

For  the  unemployables,  free  labour  colonies 
wherever  possible,  forced  colonies  wherever 
necessary;  these  colonies  should  be  small  and 
agricultural  rather  than  large  and  industrial; 
paying  their  own  expenses;  not  competing 
with  free  labour.  And  if  once  started  under 
the  management  of  practical  farmers,  assisted 
by  committees  of  surveillance,  it  is  not  im- 
probable that  they  will  end  by  furnishing 
temporary  relief  work  for  the  unemployed, 
employment  for  those  seeking  it,  and  a  less 
dreary,  expensive,  and  useless  life  to  the  aged 
and  infirm ;  so  that  they  will  eventually  replace 
not  only  the  workhouse  and  almshouse,  but 
also  the  police  and  municipal  lodging  house. 
Later  on  even  penitentiaries  and  prisons  may 
yield  up  their  hardened  inmates  to  wholesome 
contact  with  Mother  Earth;  we  may  no  longer 
with  the  agony  of  a  Hercules  have  to  hold  up 
this  weighty  Antaeus  from  the  source  of  his 
strength;  and  the  words  of  Seneca  may  at 
last  receive  their  application,  "poena  non 
irascitur  sed  cavet." 


APPENDIX  A 
INSTITUTIONAL  FARMS   IN  AMERICA 

Those  who  have  heard  of  the  City  Farm 
at  Staten  Island,  of  the  State  Farm  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  of  similar  farms  in  New 
Jersey,  as,  for  example,  the  one  at  Englewood, 
may  imagine  that  the  system  of  farm  colonies 
herein  proposed  has  already  been  tried  in 
America  without  having  resulted  in  much 
success.  An  answer  to  this  objection  will  be- 
found,  however,  upon  a  careful  study  of  these 
institutions. 

The  City  Farm  on  Staten  Island  and  similar 
farms  in  New  Jersey  constitute  a  most  praise- 
worthy effort  to  give  to  the  aged  poor  a  less 
costly  and  less  dreary  life  on  a  farm  than  they 
could  lead  in  an  almshouse.  They  are  in 
other  words  almshouses  situated  on  farms. 

The  City  Farm  on  Staten  Island  consists 

of  165  acres  of  which  nearly  90  are  under 

cultivation.      They  employ  only  about  four 

or  five  farm  hands  in  addition  to  two  or  three 
7  97 


98      The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

stable  men  and  diivers.  The  rest  of  the  work 
is  done  by  the  inmates  of  whom  there  are  about 
173  men  and  100  women. 

The  inmates  are  encouraged  to  work.  If 
they  are  able-bodied  and  won't  work  they  are 
sent  to  the  workhouse;  if  they  are  unfitted 
for  it,  they  are  not  required  to  work.  The 
result  shows  an  improvement  upon  the  ordi- 
nary almshouse  system.  The  City  Farm  in 
1906  provided  Blackwell's  Island  with  vege- 
tables amounting  to  $6,082.  I  am  informed 
that  in  1907  their  shipment  was  increased  to 
over  $8,000.  Moreover  a  very  large  amount 
of  produce  raised  on  the  farm  was  consumed 
by  the  inmates.  The  City  Farm  received  no 
cash  payment  for  the  vegetables  it  sent  to 
Blackwell's  Island  nor  is  there  any  account 
taken  of  the  amount  of  vegetables  consumed 
upon  the  farm.  It  is  difficult  therefore  to 
state  with  precision  how  far  the  City  Farm 
plan  is  more  economical  than  the  almshouse, 
but  there  is  no  doubt  as  to  its  being  cheaper. 
In  other  words  the  experience  of  the  City  Farm 
is  that  it  is  a  cheaper  system  than  the  alms- 
house and  that  it  furnishes  to  its  inmates,  a  less 
monotonous  and  more  wholesome  existence. 

The  State  Farm  of  Massachusetts  is  not 


Institutional  Farms  in  America     99 

an  almshouse:  it  is  a  workhouse  and  a  very 
good  one.  Its  inmates  are  inebriates,  tramps, 
and  vagrants.  Last  year  the  whole  number 
of  admissions  was  4,316. 

Of  this  3,404  were  for  drunkenness. 
295  for  vagrancy. 
113  for  tramping. 
49  for  idle  and  disorderly  conduct. 
8  for  "vagabondism." 
5 1  for  sundry  other  offences. 

Vagrants  are  generally  committed  for  a 
period  of  from  nine  months  to  two  years,  but 
the  sentence  is  indeterminate  and  the  men 
are  generally  discharged  after  an  average 
term  of  nine  months.  They  are  then  however, 
discharged  only  on  probation. 

There  are  a  number  of  industries  on  the 

farm,  but  there  is  no  system  of  rewards  and 

the  inmates  therefore  have  little  incentive  to 

work.     The    average  weekly  cost  per  capita 

is  $2.27.     Below  is  a  statement  of  the  farm 

for  1906: 

Dr. 

State  appropriation $258,491.73 

Sales,  etc 26,218.79 

$284,710.52 


ioo    The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

Cr, 

Salaries,     wages,     and 

labour $72,377.11 

Food 74,099.66 

Clothing   and  clothing 

material 21,993.67 

Farm,  stable,  grounds. .  17,242.20 
Travelling        expenses, 

chapel  services,  soap, 

medicine,  fuel,  light, 

printing,    stationery, 

etc 72,779.09    $258,491.73 

Paid  into  the  State  Treasury 26,218.79 


$284,710.52 


The  fact  that  the  sales  did  not  exceed  in 
amount  $26,218.79  and  that  the  salaries, 
wages,  etc.,  amounted  to  $72,377.11  indicates 
how  little  the  work  done  by  the  inmates  goes 
to  pay  for  the  expenses  of  the  institution. 
The  principal  object  of  the  institution  is  to 
treat  inebriates  and  to  deter  tramps.  In  this 
latter  capacity  it  has  worked  well.  The  fact 
that  the  term  for  which  tramps  are  committed 
is  longer  in  Massachusets  than  in  other  States; 


Institutional  Farms  in  America    101 

that  magistrates  have  power  to  commit 
vagrants  either  to  a  jail,  house  of  correction, 
penitentiary,  or  State  Farm,  and  that  the 
vagrants  who  come  before  the  magistrates 
are  generally  so  committed,  has  had  for  effect 
greatly  to  diminish  vagrancy  in  Massachusetts. 

Obviously  the  experience  of  the  State  Farm 
in  Massachusetts  cannot  be  of  much  service 
to  us  in  coming  to  a  conclusion  as  regards 
the  advisableness  of  introducing  in  the  United 
States  the  system  of  farm  colonies  proposed 
in  this  monograph,  though  the  fact  that  the 
State  Farm  has  acted  as  a  deterrent  must 
not  be  lost  sight  of  in  this  connection. 

In  conclusion  the  experience  of  Institutional 
Farms  in  the  United  States  seems  to  indicate 
that  they  can  be  run  cheaper  than  similar 
existing  institutions  without  farms,  and  that 
when  applied  to  tramps  they  can  act  as  de- 
terrents. Their  failure  to  reform  cannot  be 
urged  against  the  labour-colony  system  pro- 
posed in  this  monograph  because  reform  can- 
not be  said  to  have  been  directly  aimed  at 
by  any  of  them.  Nor  can  their  failure  to 
meet  expenses  be  argued  against  our  proposal 
because  in  no  American  experiment  has  any 
farm  been  exclusively  devoted  to  the  able- 


102    The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

bodied.  In  Massachusetts  the  majority  of 
the  inmates  of  the  State  Farm  are  inebriates, 
and  in  Staten  Island  and  New  Jersey  the 
majority  are  aged  and  infirm. 


APPENDIX  B 


CLASSIFICATION 

Dr.  Reitman  has  submitted  to  me  the  following 
classification,  which  not  only  because  it  comes  from  a 
man  who  is  himself  a  tramp  but  because  of  a  certain 
picturesqueness  which  characterises  it  as  the  work 
of  a  tramp,  I  publish  as  it  comes  from  his  pen: 


DR.  REITMAN'S  CLASSIFICATION 

The  words  "tramp,"  "hobo,"  "bum,"  "vagrant," 
etc.,  are  terms  which  are  generally  used  synonymously, 
but  there  are  unquestionably  three  distinct  types  of 
itinerant  vagrant  tramping  about  the  country.  These 
I  shall  call  "  tramp,"  "  hobo,"  and  "  bum."  They  are 
three  species  of  the  genus  vagrant. 

103 


io4    The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 


VAGRANTS 

or  penniless  wan- 
derers. Every 
species  is  itself 
sub-classified  ac- 
cording to: 

a.  Character. 

b.  Geographical 

distribution. 

c.  Type. 


I.    TRAMP 

Dreams    and 

wanders. 
Trampdom — 
Main    lines    of 
railroads. 
Runaway  boy. 

2.  HOBO 

Works  and 

wanders. 

H  o  b  o  1  a  n  d — 
farms,  ice- 
houses, sec- 
tion nouses, 
mines,  etc. 

Non-employed. 

3.  BUM 

Drinks  and 
wanders. 

Bumville — Bar- 
rel houses 
and  saloons. 

Drunkard. 


Tramp  criminal. 
Criminal  tramp. 
Neuropathic 
tramp. 


Tramp  hobo. 
Train  hobo. 
Bum  hobo. 
Criminal  hobo. 
Neuropathic  hobo. 


Criminal  bum. 
Neuropathic  bum. 


The  only  explanation  that  the  foregoing  seems  to 
require  is  as  to  the  distinction  between  tramp  crimi- 
nal and  criminal  tramp.  By  the  tramp  criminal  is 
meant  a  criminal  who  resorts  to  tramping  in  order  to 
escape  detection.  By  criminal  tramp  is  meant  a 
tramp  who  does  not  beg  but  steals. 

CLASSIFICATION    OF    THE    DEPARTMENTAL 
COMMITTEE 


In  Chapter  III.  of  vol.  i.  of  The  Departmental  Report 
on  Vagrancy  (pp.  24-25),  the  following  classification 
is  found : 


Classification  105 

1.  Bona  fide  working  man  in  search  of  work. 

2.  Unemployed   willing   only  to   undertake   casual 

labour. 

3.  Able-bodied  not  willing  to  work  at  all. 

4.  Non-able-bodied  or  unemployables. 

I  venture  to  suggest  that  the  foregoing  is  not  com- 
plete and  to  propose  the  following: 

1.  CLASSIFICATION  ACCORDING  TO  PHYSI- 

CAL   STRENGTH 

A.    ABLE-BODIED 

i.     Able-bodied  boys  travelling  for  fun. 

2.  Able-bodied  unemployed  anxious  to  work. 

3.  Able-bodied  unemployed  accustomed  to  casual 

labour  and  willing  only  to  work  on  odd  jobs. 

4.  Able-bodied  unemployed  not  willing  to  work  at 

all. 

5.  Misdemeanants. 

B.    NON-ABLE-BODIED 

i.     Blameless  unemployed  who  are  unable  to  work 

through  age,  illness,  or  accident. 
2.     Unemployed  whose  capacity  for  work  has  been 
affected  by  drink. 
.  (a)     Those    whose    physical    incapacity    is 
temporary  and  who  can  within  rea- 
sonable time  recover  capacity  to  work 
upon  being  removed  from  the  temp- 
tation to  drink. 


106    The  Elimination  of  the  Tramp 

(6)  Those  whose  incapacity  is  permanent 
but  who  are  capable  of  being  restored 
to  physical  capacity  after  a  suffi- 
ciently long  treatment. 

(c)     Incurables. 

3.  Neuropaths. 

4.  Misdemeanants. 

II.     CLASSIFICATION  ACCORDING  TO  BLAME- 
LESSNESS 

A.       BLAMELESS 

i.     Able-bodied  anxious  to  work. 

2.  Non-able-bodied   unable   to  work   through    age, 

illness,  or  accident. 

3.  Able-bodied  boys  travelling  for  fun.1 

4.  Neuropaths. 

B.       NOT  BLAMELESS 

i.  Able-bodied  willing  to  work  at  casual  labour  only. 

2.  Able-bodied  refusing  to  work. 

3.  Drunkards. 

4.  Misdemeanants. 

1  These  boys  are  classified  as  blameless  because  if  the 
railroad  stations  and  tracks  were  guarded  here  as  they  are  in 
Europe  the  boys  would  not  be  tempted  in  the  first  instance 
to  train  flip.  The  fault  can  hardly  be  imputed  to  the  rail- 
roads, for  the  country  is  not  closely  enough  settled  to  make 
the  guarding  of  tracks  feasible,  and  the  habit  of  stealing  rides 
has  become  so  prevalent  that  train  hands  cannot  be  induced 
to  obey  orders  and  put  a  stop  to  it. 


Classification  107 

III.    CLASSIFICATION  ACCORDING  TO  CAUSE 
OF  UNEMPLOYMENT. 

A.  TEMPORARY 

i.     Able-bodied  anxious  to  work. 

2.  Able-bodied  willing  to  work  at  casual  labour  only. 

3.  Able-bodied  boys  travelling  for  fun. 

B.  PERMANENT 

i.     Able-bodied  who  refuse  to  work. 

2.  Able-bodied  misdemeanants. 

3.  Non-able-bodied  unable  to  work  in  consequence  of : 

(a)  Age,  illness,  or  accident. 

(b)  Drunkenness. 

(c)  Misdemeanants. 

4.  Neuropaths. 

The  value  of  this  classification  is  explained  in  the 
text. 


APPENDIX  C 
FORM  OF  CONTRACT  USED  IN  SWITZERLAND 

Contract  between  the  Colony  of  Nusshof,  near 
Witzwyl,  of  the  first  part,  and  ,  colonist,  of  the 

second  part. 

i.  The  undersigned,  who  enters  the  Colony  of  his 
own  free  will,  for  the  purpose  of  working  there,  agrees 
to  obey  the  rules  and  regulations  of  the  said  Colony, 
to  stay  at  least  two  months,  and  to  inform  the  man- 
agers of  his  intention  to  leave  at  least  a  week  in 
advance. 

2.  Articles  of  clothing  which  have  not  been  paid 
for  by  the  colonist  must  be  left  behind  on  leaving ;  he 
is  only  entitled  to  such  clothes  as  he  brought  with  him. 

3.  Every  inmate  is  given  lodging,  sufficient  food, 
and  working  clothes,  so  that  he  has  no  expenses  what- 
ever. He  shall  be  cared  for  in  the  Colony  in  case  of 
temporary  sickness  (unless  brought  on  through  the 
inmate's  own  fault). 

4.  Wages  vary  from  50  centimes  to  Fr.  1.50  per 
day,  in  accordance  with  Articles  8  and  9  of  the  Rules. 

If  the  inmate  is  expelled  during  the  first  two  months 
(Article  4  of  the  Rules),  he  is  not  entitled  to  receive 
any  wages. 

5.  As  regards  payment  of  wages,  Article  10  of  the 

108 


Swiss  Form  of  Contract  109 

Rules  applies.  Every  inmate,  upon  being  admitted 
to  the  Colony,  is  informed  of  the  Rules. 

In  case  of  disagreement,  the  question  shall  be  brought 
before  and  settled  by  the  Witzwyl  Institution. 

Witzwyl,  this  day  of  ,  190     . 


APPENDIX  D 

RULES   AND   REGULATIONS   OF   NUSSHOF 
COLONY 

i.  The  Witzwyl  Colony  has  a  home  at  Nusshof  for 
discharged  inmates,  the  object  of  which  is  to  provide 
those  among  the  latter  who  wish  to  make  better  use  of 
their  liberty,  with  a  home  to  be  considered  as  an  inter- 
mediary stage  between  the  Forced  Labour  Colony  and 
the  outer  world. 

As  long  as  there  is  room,  unemployed  workmen  are 
free  to  enter  the  home  and  to  work  there  on  the  same 
lines  as  the  other  colonists. 

2.  Employment  is  given  and  a  contract  entered 
into  between  the  foreman  and  the  colonists. 

3.  Colonists  must  furnish  proof  that  their  late  con- 
duct has  been  satisfactory. 

Cripples  or  workmen  suffering  from  infectious  dis- 
eases are  not  admitted. 

4.  Colonists  must  obey  the  rules  of  the  establish- 
ment. 

Drunkenness  and  unruly  behaviour  are  followed  by 
immediate  dismissal. 

5.  Colonists  are  not  allowed  to  leave  Witzwyl 
without  an  authorisation  from  the  Director. 


Rules  of  Nusshof  Colony         in 

6.  Colonists  who  have  shown  industry  and 
capacity  can  attain  positions  of  trust. 

7.  Colonists  receive  free  board  and  lodging,  and 
working  clothes. 

Special  agreements  are  entered  into  with  skilled 
labourers  as  regards  remuneration. 

8.  Colonists  who  enter  the  establishment  in  the 
winter  (December  1st  to  the  end  of  February)  receive 
no  wages  during  that  time.  Those  who  enter  in  the 
summer  or  autumn  (March  1st  to  the  end  of  Decem- 
ber), and  whose  work  is  satisfactory,  receive  reduced 
wages  during  the  winter  months. 

9 .  Wages  vary  from  5  o  centimes  to  Fr .  1.50  per  day. 
The  foremen  fix  the  wages  in  the  beginning. 

10.  During  the  time  of  the  contract,  the  managers 
fix  the  amount  of  wages.  A  part  of  the  men's  wages 
is  spent  on  clothes  and  linen ;  the  rest  is  placed  to  their 
credit  unless  paid  out  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
colonist's  family. 

O.  Kellerhals,  Director. 
Witzwyl,  June,  1905. 


■ 


14  DAY  USE 

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